Furthermore, these relevant issues drove the company to implement a
continuous improvement program that can ensure uninterrupted operations
due to equipment failure or breakdown. The management of the company
viewed that maintenance costs increased about 20-30 percent of the
production costs. Moreover, emergency repairs were three times more
expensive (Sharma et al., 2006). Therefore, TPM was implemented, with all
TPM pillars help to sustain competitive advantage and a part of company’s
strategic plan, the semi-automated assembly production line was selected for
carrying a preliminary study. Generally, the goal of this preliminary study was
to increase the knowledge of the industry and to investigate TPM practices,
namely autonomous maintenance and planned maintenance on manufacturing
performance. Basically, these practices are also known as TPM basic practices
and highlighted by various researchers such as Brah and Chong (2004); Cua
et al., (2001) and McKone et al., (2001). Another objective of this preliminary
study is to supply validity of survey instrument as suggested by Mentzer & Flint
(1997) and Ellram (1996). A plant visit for extensive interview with Maintenance
Manager was conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire. The questions
were aimed at obtaining a better understanding of total productive
maintenance practices and implementation in the industry. The result of the
preliminary study will be presented in the next section.