Page 55 - TPM A Route to World-Class Performance

36 TPM-A Route to World-Class Performance

0 the motor car (using the senses)
0 the healthy body (defining core competences)
the soccer team (creating the company-wide team)

Each is described below. At the end of the chapter there are two light-hearted
stories. The first one is about an overhead projector operator and his
maintenance colleague, which contains the best parts of the analogies in
order to underpin the basically straightforward, but nonetheless fundamental,
principles of TPM.
The second story relates to how a typical supervisor of the ’just do as I say’
mould progressively changes to a ’let’s work together to find the best way‘ style.
The motor car

A good analogy of using our senses, including common sense, is the way in
which we look after our motor cars as a team effort between the operator
(you, the owner and driver) and the maintainer (the garage maintenance
mechanic) (see Figure 3.11).
As the operator of your motor car you take pride of ownership of this
important asset. TPM strives to bring that sense of ownership and responsibility
to the workplace. To extend the motor car analogy: when you, as the operator,
take your car to the garage, the first thing the mechanic will seek is your view
as to what is wrong with the car (your machine). He will know that you are
best placed to act as his senses - ears, eyes, nose, mouth and common sense.
If you say, ’Well, I’m not sure, but it smells of petrol and the engine is misfiring
at 60 mph’, he will probably say ’That’s useful to know, but is there anything
else you can tell me?’ ’Yes,’ you reply, ’I’ve cleaned the plugs and checked the
plug gaps.’ He won’t be surprised that you carried out these basic checks,
and certainly won’t regard them as a mechanic-only job. ‘Fine,’ he might say,
’and that didn’t cure the problem?’ ’No,’ you reply, ‘so I adjusted the timing
mechanism!’ ’Serves you right then,’ says the mechanic, ‘and now it will cost
you time and money for me to put it right.’ In other words, in the final stage
you, the operator, went beyond your level of competence and actually hindered
the team effort. TPM is about getting a balanced team effort between operators
and maintainers -both experts in their own right, but prepared to co-operate
as a team.
As the operator of your car you know it makes sense to clean it - not
because you are neurotic about having a clean car just for the sake of it, but
rather because cleaning is inspection, which is spotting deterioration before
it becomes catastrophic. The example in Figure 3.11 shows the power of this
operator /ownership. In the routine car checks described, our senses of sight,
hearing, touch and smell are used to detect signs which may have implications
for inconvenience, safety, damage or the need for repairs or replacements. None
of the 27 checks listed in the Figure requires a spanner or a screwdriver, but
17 of them have implications for safety. The analogy with TPM is clear: failure
of the operator to be alert to his machine’s condition can inhibit safety and
lead to consequential damage, inconvenience, low productivity and high cost.