Page 268 - TPM A Route to World-Class Performance

242 TPM-A Route to World-Class Performance

Six further sites will be identified during this year for a TPM programme
which will embrace all significant RJB locations before the end of 2001.
Two ’facilitators’ - Sean Kelley and Tim Marples - have been recruited to
help roll out a programme which potentially could save the company millions
of pounds, reduce production costs and improve safety. Sean, 28, previously
worked for Elida Fabergk, part of the Unilever group, where he was a full-
time TPM facilitator, while Tim, 37, was previously with Miller Mining, where
he had valuable experience in problem-solving techniques and change
management facilitation. Their responsibility within the organization will be
to train, assist in implementation and provide continual practical support for
TPM across the business, and to sustain an environment of continuous
improvement.
Says RJB’s Mining Services Director, Grant Budge:
As was explained in the last edition of Newscene, TPM is about
developing the business together and continuously focusing on
the areas of lost potential within our processes.
TPM is not designed to replace our current practices, but to
support and develop them so that we can collectively improve
the safety and performance of our workplace. It’s not about
working harder - it’s all about working smarter.
While new to RJB, TPM is an internationally accepted business development
strategy and has been used by a large number of companies, and a wide
range of disciplines, over the past twenty years. It extends the ’team philosophy’
across the shifts and disciplines, seeking to maximize efficiency and product
quality through teamwork.
Being results-driven, TPM looks at the complete process, rather than
individual elements, reviewing the entire cycle of events to identify and
correct weaknesses and minimize losses.

4.0 It’s all about teamwork
Time is money - and on Daw Mill’s key 204s coalface, an additional 1 per
cent improvement in equipment effectiveness could increase production by 2
per cent. It’s here, 600 metres below ground in Shakespeare country, that
Command Supervisor, Mark Emmett, and his boys are doing the business
thanks to a forward-looking management style that’s seen face teams grasp
the nettle of change.
On Warwickshire Thick 204s, a 300-metre faceline taking a four-metre coal
section with some of the highest rated equipment ever seen at a British mine,
a core team charged with improving equipment effectiveness and planned
maintenance systems has been formed - and from the support they are getting,
they’re producing results.
Total Productive Mining is no midsummer night’s dream at Daw Mill. As
Mark says: