TPM is a change management approach that has been shown to have considerable impact on the internal efficiency of manufacturing organisations, both in the West and in Japan. Here are just a few articles as evidence of the success of TPM.
Carter (1999) started the implementation of TPM in the US shipbuilding industry and achieved higher levels of quality and timeliness and eliminated costly delays in its shipbuilding operations.
In 1996, MRC Bearings implemented a TPM program, and ten months later their breakdown losses fell to less than 30 hours, a decrease of over 540 per cent (Aerospace, 1999).
The popularity of trucks like the F-series meant that the Ford Windsor Engine Plant needed to produce more engines. An increase of 100,000 engines, announced in April, brought the output for 2000 to 950,000 units (Vasilash, 1999).
One of the central tenets of TPM is autonomous maintenance hence there is an implied loss of job demarcation. McAdam and McGeough (2000) implemented TPM in a heavily demarcated and unionised organisation and reap the benefits.