INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

REPORT
 a. Total Productive Maintenance

Total productive maintenance is an approach to combine preventive maintenance with

total quality control and employee involvement. In this new approach everyone is involved in
to keep the equipment in good condition to avoid breakdowns and repairs which causes in
decrease in productivity, increase in manufacturing costs etc. The objective is to achieve zero
defects, zero break downs and zero accidents by getting the people of all levels involved to
reduce defects and maintenance. The machine operators job is to operate the machine and the
maintenance technicians job is to fix and repair was the mentality of the previous methods.
Under TPM all workers are involved in maintenance process. The machine operator is also
responsible for maintenance of the machine he is operating.

The machine operators are given a basic knowledge on how the machine works. This
helps them to operate the machine properly and carefully. It helps them to be more sensitive to
malfunctions. They could inform the maintenance group about the malfunction and ask them
to repair. If this were done in the earlier procedure, this malfunction would be noticed at the
scheduled inspection and this could make the damage bigger converting, changing of a small
part to replacing a whole assembly due to using the machine with the malfunction. The
production of less quality products due to malfunctions are be also reduced. Customer
complains will reduce. Small repairs could be done by operators themselves. Since the operator
himself repairs minor problems, the repairs are done faster than informing the maintenance
team and waiting till they arrive. This reduces the down time of the machine. Increases
productivity. Cleaning, lubricating, adjusting and servicing machines is also done by the
operator and this reduces minor repairs. The life of equipment expands as the minor repairs are
done quickly without using the machine with fault causing more damage. Scheduling
maintenance plans becomes easy as the allocated separate time for each machine could be
reduced as the minor repairs are done by the operators. The maintenance team could
concentrate on higher level tasks. A smaller maintenance team could manage the work of same
size factory which used the earlier procedure. The cost of production is reduced. This practice
reduces accidents. The maintenance and repair cost is reduced. The employees get a higher
confidence level and will work more effectively. Employees could share their knowledge and
experience and this helps to learn more about the machine as well as it develops the bonding
among the employees. The operators will have a feeling of owning the operating machine and
they will use it carefully and maintain it well and as the machines gets compared by each other’s

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machines all operators will try their best to keep their machine well maintained. The machine
as well as the working area will also be kept cleaned and attractive. As they know the working
mechanism they can get new ideas in performing the same task in a much easier way and can
help the designing team by sharing the ideas.

b. Industrial Training experience

During industrial training I got the opportunity to work in the Construction Machinery
Development unit of Diesel & Motor Engineering PLC which is better known as DIMO. This
unit had rented Fork lifts for several companies and maintenance & repairs for better working
of this machinery was done by this unit.

1. Characteristics of the systems

I. Planned or scheduled maintenance

Planned maintenance was done for all fork lifts once in every 4 months. The plan was
set by a computer software and in the morning of the day before the maintenance, a notification
or an alert is displayed on the software as a reminder of the maintenance. The Venue, Company,
machine details, set of tools that should be taken for the Service, rules and regulations to enter
the premises of that company are shown by the software and if special notes are put at the last
service about of concern of special parts those parts and the note will also appear as a reminder.
These services are done to check the condition of the machine, to ensure safe and efficient
operation of the equipment, lubricate the parts, check tensions of the belts and chain, check
condition of the solid tires etc. A set of list for inspection is also given in order for a complete
inspection. Parts to be inspected could be forgotten if just inspected without a set of list. After
inspecting the parts, the machined is checked for proper operation. Parts to be replaced, issues
of the machine are noted down for the next service.

II. Corrective or breakdown maintenance

These maintenances are performed after a breakdown. Impossible to plan work

beforehand. A special team is set for corrective/ breakdown maintenance for quick repair and
to reduce down time of the machine. According problem mentioned by customer using the
previous knowledge the issue could be identified. Then the tools and the parts and the minimum
required technicians could be sent for that task. Otherwise all the basic tools required for that

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machine to repair at that premises will be taken. The main objective of this maintenance is to
recover as quickly as possible to reduce downtime of the machine. If it is a major repair or
repair done using special tools a spare machine will be given and this machine will be taken to
the DIMO workshop for repair. Failure to replace worn out parts, lack of lubrication, neglected
cooling systems, unresponsive to minor faults are few of the reasons for these sudden
breakdowns.

III. Condition Maintenance & preventive maintenance

This maintenance uses the knowledge of the previous gathered from routine inspection
and monitoring. The conditions are inspected at the planned maintenance or at the breakdown
maintenance. This is done to make the equipment’s always ready for use, to maintain the value
of the equipment and to ensure the safety of the workers etc. Frequency of inspection can be
based on the past experience. For companies which work for longer hours have more usage of
the equipment. Thus the maintenance should be done more frequently than of the companies
of average use. The equipment’s which are a bit old are also inspected more frequently as they
are more likely to breakdown.

2. Benefits achieved through implementation of preventive maintenance

By implementing preventive maintenance, breakdowns at unanticipated moments could

be avoided. The fork lifts were used to move the manufactured products into the stores. So
when a fork lift is down for repair the rest of the fork lifts have to work a bit faster. This could
lead to accidents. The whole process could get slow as the output gets stuck due to lack of a
fork lift. So by preventive maintenance such break downs could be avoided and the down time
due to break down could be reduced. Then the odd time repairs will reduce and over time to
maintenance work force will also reduce. These well maintained machines give greater safety
for the workers. The cost for maintenance and repair reduces as proper parts are replaced at the
correct time. Due to preventive maintenance parts are replaced at correct time and this increases
equipment life. As a manager you can identify the maintenance costs of these machines and it
is helpful to compare when purchasing new machines. As the overtime reduces and the use of
rental machines till the fork lifts are repaired is reduced, thus the unit cost of manufacture
reduces. As the breakdown reduces less stand by or reserve equipment’s and spare parts have
to stored. So all together doing preventive maintenance is an advantage. But preventive

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maintenance can be costly. The preventive maintenance cost should be balanced by the cost
due to not doing preventive maintenance. So doing preventive maintenance to all the
equipment’s is not economical. This should apply for the key items which seriously disrupt
production.

3. Challenges faced while implementing

I. Allocated space

The space allocated to repair the machines were limited. It is harder to do the
inspections properly due to the less allocated space and due to bad lighting conditions. Tasks
such as replacing large parts need space and some tasks such as replacing damaged hydraulic
lines should be done more carefully to avoid spilling oil. Sometimes repairing is done at a place
where other people is also working and it could be a safety issue for other working people and
if the machine is stopped blocking a path the repairing and inspections will have to be done
quickly and it could tense the technician and could miss the weak spots when inspecting and
repairing will not be done up to standards.

II. Working continuously

Some of the factories work throughout the day and it is harder to get a time for
maintenance. This practice is not also good for the machine. As these machines are operated
than the average time maintenance should be done more regularly. The usage of the machine
is also unpredictable. Due to sever usage even though the machines are maintained these are
more likely to make problems.

III. Over loading

Even though all the maintenance is done properly, due to overloading the machine,
more often unexpected failure could occur. This could create safety hazards for the people of
the factory and also the maintenance technicians also get a bad impression when more failures
occur. The Condition of the parts tend to decay more quickly and the inspections done at
scheduled maintenance should be done thoroughly.

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 iv. More down time

Some of the repairs are need to be done at the workshop. Special tools are required to
do the maintenance. So the machine will have to be taken to the workshop and brought back.
Thus doing so the down time will increase. This increased downtime is unavoidable.

4. Further improvement opportunities

I. Standard way of performing the maintenance

The technicians have worked in different companies and have different past experiences.
There can be proper way of performing and also wrong practicing could also be done. So a set
of standard ways of preforming should be set. So that all the technicians will perform in
standard way. For an example a technician at the 1st maintenance could adjust or calibrate the
machine according to the practice of the previous work place of his. But when a technician
comes for the 2nd maintenance he could observe a wrong adjusting procedure. If this not
identified this could be a reason for a future major repair and once it is identified the blame
could be done to 2nd maintenance technician even though the first maintenance technician did
the wrong adjustment.

II. Have different Scheduled plans for companies which have longer working hours

Companies which have longer working hours should be maintained more often as they
are more likely to wear and failure. If not more corrective/breakdown repairs will have to done
and down time will increase. This will affect to the whole manufacturing process.

III. Have training to corrective/breakdown maintenance to perform faster

Corrective maintenance should be performed quickly and this should not be practiced
at a breakdown situation. Training should be done to get more user to the maintenance
procedure. The breakdown division could get lot of breakdowns at once or there could be no
break downs for some time. So the technicians could be out of touch. So training should be
done at the workshops.

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