ABSTRACT
Maintenance is an inevitable function in manufacturing plants. Manufacturing plants are
exposed to newer and rapidly changing paradigms. Today, a productive maintenance strategy
and programs have utmost importance in order to discover the useable but hidden resources
in an organization. A well-conceived action plan is a pre-requisite to unearth those potential
treasures. This paper presents a brief action plan for implementation of total productive
maintenance (TPM). From an empirical study, conducted by these authors, it is revealed that
demanding quality in maintenance practices is still a far cry. Lack of understanding of the
method and implementation guidelines appear to be the major factors responsible for this
state. Therefore, it is strongly felt that TPM deserves more attention both in practices and
research.