The literature has revealed that the manufacturing organizations worldwide are facing many challenges to achieve successful operation in today’s competitive environment. Modern manufacturing requires that to be successful, organizations must be supported by both effective and efficient maintenance practices and procedures. Modern equipment management began with preventive maintenance and evolved into productive maintenance. These approaches both abbreviated as ‘‘PM’’ originated in the US with activities focused in the maintenance department. TPM, however, stands for total productive maintenance with total participation. Till 1950s organizations were carrying out breakdown maintenance. As and when machinery went out of order, maintenance crew was called to attend and put it back to normalcy for production.
Over the past two decades, manufacturing organizations have used different approaches to improve maintenance effectiveness (Roup 1999:32-5). One approach to improving the performance of maintenance activities is to implement and develop a TPM strategy. The TPM implementation methodology provides organizations with a guide to fundamentally transform their shop floor by integrating culture, process, and technology (Moore 1997:88-90).
The concept of TPM originated in Japan’s manufacturing industries, initially with the aim of eliminating production loses due to limitations in the JIT process for production operations. Seiichi Nakajima, vice chairman of the Japanese Institute of Plant Engineers (JIPE), promoted TPM through Japan and has become known as father of TPM. Modern equipment management began with preventive maintenance (PM) and evolved into productive maintenance. First developed in Japan, TPM is team based productive maintenance and involves every level and function in the organization, from top executives to the production floor operators. Japan adopted PM concept in 1951. PM can be thought of as a kind of physical check up and preventive medicine for equipment (Willmott 1994).
Various researchers have noted the importance of TPM implementation in the manufacturing environment (Ahmed et al. 2005:19-42; Ahuja and Khamba 2007:338-52) and in the service sector (Patra et al. 2005:415-24; Pramod et al. 2006:150-71). TPM is considered to be Japan’s answer to US style productive maintenance (Wal and Lynn 2002:359-66). TPM has been widely recognized as a strategic weapon for improving manufacturing performance by enhancing the effectiveness of production facilities (Dwyer 1999:15-16; Dossenbach 2006:29-32). TPM has been accepted as the most promising strategy for improving maintenance performance in order to succeed in a highly demanding market arena (Nakajima 1988). TPM is the proven manufacturing strategy that has been successfully employed globally for the last three decades, for achieving the organizational objectives of achieving core competence in the competitive environment (Ahuja et al. 2004:422-6).