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Implementing TPM in plant maintenance: Some organisational

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 International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management
Implementing TPM in plant maintenance: some organisational barriers
Fang Lee Cooke
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Fang Lee Cooke, (2000),"Implementing TPM in plant maintenance: some organisational barriers",
International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 17 Iss 9 pp. 1003 - 1016
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F. Ireland, B.G. Dale, (2001),"A study of total productive maintenance implementation", Journal of Quality in
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C.J. Bamber, J.M. Sharp, M.T. Hides, (1999),"Factors affecting successful implementation of total productive
maintenance: A UK manufacturing case study perspective", Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering,
Vol. 5 Iss 3 pp. 162-181 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13552519910282601
I.P.S. Ahuja, J.S. Khamba, (2008),"Total productive maintenance: literature review and directions",
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Implementing TPM in plant Implementing

TPM in plant
maintenance: some maintenance

organisational barriers
Fang Lee Cooke 1003
UMIST, Manchester, UK Received February 2000
Revised July 2000
Keywords Competitiveness, Total productive maintenance, Maintenance, Barriers
Abstract Since the 1980s, quality initiatives, seen as critical for greater competitiveness, have
gained much attention from British management under the influence of Japanese management
principles. This has resulted in a widespread adoption of quality techniques such as quality circles,
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teamworking, customer care, total quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance
(TPM), etc. This paper reports the finding of a study of the production and maintenance function
of four processing/manufacturing companies. It intends to highlight the difficulties that these
companies have been faced with in their attempt to implement TPM initiatives between the
production and maintenance departments in order to improve organisational efficiency. The
paper concludes that implementing TPM is by no means an easy task, which is heavily burdened
by political, financial, departmental and inter-occupational barriers.

Introduction
During the 1970s and especially the 1980s, increased competition from overseas
and rapid innovation of new technology left many organisations with no choice
but to take the option of renewing capital investment, updating production
technology, readjusting work organisation and product characteristics. In the
same rationale, quality initiatives, seen as critical for greater competitiveness,
have gained much attention from British management under the influence of
Japanese management principles. This has resulted in a widespread adoption
of quality techniques such as quality circles, teamworking, customer care, total
quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance (TPM), etc.
Quality initiatives have been reported as occurring in three quarters of
companies in the USA and UK (The Economist, 1992; Wilkinson et al., 1993).
IDS Study 407 (1988) reported that the most notable feature of the trade union
agreements covered in the study was the new emphasis on teamworking.
Regarded as a concept of the 1990s, teamworking was found to be emphasized
in a range of different companies, albeit ``there are sharp differences between
companies in what they really mean by teamworking'' (IDS 407, 1988, p. 7).
The emergence of TPM is intended to ``bring both functions (production and
maintenance) together by a combination of good working practices,
teamworking and continuous improvement'' (IDS 610, 1996, p. 1). First
developed in Japan in 1971 by the Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance
The author would like to acknowledge the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and
WaterCo for providing a two-year collaborative case studentship for the PhD study. The author International Journal of Quality &
Reliability Management,
would also like to thank Dr Bernard Burnes and two referees for their useful comments on the Vol. 17 No. 9, 2000, pp. 1003-1016.
earlier draft of the paper. # MCB University Press, 0265-671X
 IJQRM (JIPM) and widely adopted in Japanese firms today, TPM is a notion taken from
17,9 the TQM concept of zero production defects and applying it to equipment
where the aim is to have zero breakdowns and minimal production losses
(Tajiri and Gotoh, 1992). TPM, a relatively new approach to the development of
maintenance systems (Nakajima, 1988), is ``a scientific company-wide approach
in which every employee is concerned about the maintenance and the quality
1004 and efficiency of his or her equipment'' (Dale and Cooper, 1992, p. 163). The
condition of the equipment, it is argued, has a considerable influence on the
quality of the product which has to match or even exceed the needs and
expectations of customers. As part of the TPM philosophy, operators and
maintenance workers need to have a greater understanding of each other's
function and often have to acquire some new skills. For example, operators
need to learn to anticipate problems and should be able to carry out minor
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adjustments and basic preventive maintenance, such as routine checking,

cleaning and lubrication, an enhanced role in which multi-skilling is seen as
providing essential support. In practising TPM, the maintainers are released
from the tasks of lower skill levels and are able to move onto jobs which require
higher level of skills such as ``equipment improvement, more complex
preventive maintenance and overhauls'' (IDS 610, 1996, p. 1). In short, the
objective of TPM is to create a sense of joint responsibility between
supervision, operators and maintenance workers, not only to keep machines
running smoothly, but also to optimise their overall performance (Tajiri and
Gotoh, 1992; Hutchins, 1998). Derived from the concept of TQM, TPM shares
much in common with TQM in that they both:
. involve everybody in the company;
. require inter-departmental team working and joint responsibility;
. emphasise company/plant efficiency and effectiveness through quality
(zero defect), continuous improvement and optimisation of overall
performance instead of partial performance.
Success stories of these closely allied quality initiatives have been limited,
perhaps not unexpectedly. Quality, much like flexibility, is ``vague and difficult
to improve yet critical to competitiveness'' (Upton, 1995, p. 75). While quality
gurus diagnose the failure as management's lack of understanding of and
commitment to the quality principles, thus providing insufficient time and
resources and/but expecting ``quick fixes'', critiques of quality initiatives cast
doubts on the gurus' simplistic views of organisations (in which organisational
politics is absent) and their consequent assumption that the implementation of
quality initiatives is a linear process requiring only fine tuning of departmental
functions (e.g. Wilkinson and Willmott, 1994).
This paper reports the findings of a study of the production and
maintenance function of four processing/manufacturing companies. It intends
 to highlight the difficulties that these companies have been faced with in their Implementing
attempt to implement TPM initiatives between the production and TPM in plant
maintenance departments in order to improve organisational efficiency. maintenance
Research method
In this research sponsored by ESRC, a multi-case study approach has been
used as a research strategy in which the production and maintenance 1005
departments of four large and medium size organisations were studied. The
case study approach has been widely used in the studies of organisations and
has generated a huge amount of high quality information which has
contributed significantly in deepening our understanding of organisational life
in reality. Indeed, there is no better way to examine maintenance work other
than to get into the battlefield where such work is taking place every day.
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Technological change, organisational change and skill are by their nature

complicated issues intricately interrelated and therefore require a
comprehensive research method in order to capture precisely different aspects
of the issues under research. Such a topic can only be benefited from case study
research. As Stoecker argues, ``[t]he `heuristic' case study delves more deeply
into a particular problem to better grasp its complexity and suggest possible
new theoretical tasks and generalizable principles'' (Stoecker, 1991, p. 99).
The empirical work of this study was conducted mainly at plant level. It
involved several sets of visits to each of the case organisations during a period
from March 1997 to April 1999. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative
techniques has been used throughout the case study process, which includes
employee survey, in-depth interview, documentary analysis, observation and
informal conversation. These multiple methods, or ``methodological
triangulation'' (Patton, 1987), are used in order to enhance the internal validity
of the data (Bromley, 1986; Yin, 1994). Company documents, including
confidential audit reports, policy statements, internal memos and general
correspondence, were highly accessible, which have provided a useful reference
source for understanding the policies and constructing a chronology of key
events which have taken, and are taking, place in the firm. As Yin points out,
``systematic searches for relevant documents are important in any data
collection plan'' (Yin, 1994, p. 81). Interpretation of the meaning and
significance of these documents has, nevertheless, been cautious. A
questionnaire survey was conducted among the maintenance workers on issues
concerning maintenance work, technological change and skill acquisition. The
use of a questionnaire survey has proved to be highly beneficial. It harnessed
information which was not captured in the interviews or observations. But in
general, the findings from the survey are consistent with the qualitative data
obtained from the interviews. Together with the various company documents,
the questionnaire survey has provided most of the quantitative data analysed
in this research. Table I shows general information concerning the case study
companies.
 IJQRM Company WaterCo SaltCo GlassUK PrintersLtd
17,9
Total no. of employees (1998) 4,225 155 359 276
No. of craftsmen for plant
maintenance (1998) 360 28 44 71
Maintenance budget (1998) £20m £2.8m £1.03m £0.66m
Number of surveyees 78 27 15 28
1006 Representing rate (%) 22 96 39 39
Interviewsa 54 18 15 16
Maintenance audit AMISb Audit External audit AMIS audit
year of audit 1996, 1998 1997 1995 none
a
Table I. Notes: Interviewees include people from outside the production and maintenance
General information on department; b AMIS ± asset maintenance information service. AMIS benchmark audit is a
the case study national maintenance benchmarking process initiated in the early 1990s and sponsored by
companies the UK government (DTI)
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While observation, documentary analysis and employee survey have provided

fruitful information to that yielded by the semi-structured interviews, it was the
latter that has been the primary research method used in the field work. In
conducting the interviews, an open-ended, semi-structured interview technique
was employed so that avenues which presented themselves in the course of
discussion could be followed up. Altogether, over 100 interviews have been
conducted on an individual basis in the four case companies. Those
interviewed ranged from managers at all levels including directors, to
maintenance craftsmen, operators, apprentices, and contractors. Interviews
with middle managers/supervisors typically lasted about one hour, and one-
and-a-half hours in the case of senior managers/directors. Interviews with
shop/office floor personnel were generally shorter, normally lasting between 30
to 45 minutes.

Companies under investigation

The organisations in this study include: privatised utilities (WaterCo), two
manufacturing processing companies (SaltCo and GlassUK), and a printing
company (PrintersLtd). These companies share broadly similar characteristics
in terms of their production nature and the types of employers they are
perceived to be by their employees. All four case study firms have a company
history of at least 20 years. They all operate in a continuous production mode
based on mass production and sale at cheap cost and price. The maintenance
departments studied are all responsible for plant maintenance. All four case
study firms have introduced a computerised maintenance management
information system to monitor and improve equipment performance and
maintenance efficiency. They have also attempted to implement TPM between
the production and the maintenance departments in order to increase the plant
efficiency (see Table II).
WaterCo supplies fresh water and recycles waste water to a region in
England. As it is a large company, the operation and maintenance departments
 Company Official policy of TPM Practice on the shopfloor Implementing
TPM in plant
WaterCo Basic maintenance carried out by Few operators do it maintenance
operators A contractor is hired to do it
Driving force Horizontal: dept-dept
Maintenance dept wants Resistance from the ops
operational dept to share more management because of cost 1007
maintenance tasks concern
SaltCo Basic maintenance carried out by Some operators do it, some do not
operators
Driving force Top-down
But management does not force the Indifferent attitude from operators
issue
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GlassUK Basic maintenance carried out by Most of the operators do it

operators
Driving force Top-down
Senior management wants operators Resistance from the trade union and
to share more maintenance tasks operators
PrintersLtd Basic maintenance carried out by Most of them do it
operators
Driving force Horizontal: dept-dept Table II.
Maintenance dept wants No time for the operators to do it Implementation of
operational dept to share more Operators sympathetic of TPM in the companies
maintenance tasks maintainers under investigation

operate as two separate companies, each one having its own business policies
and budgets. The maintenance department is divided into 18 units covering a
wide geographical area, each under the management of a maintenance
manager. The maintenance craftsmen (360 of them) only work day shifts while
the operators work on shifts round the clock. A standby system is used and the
craftsmen take turns to be on-call to cover emergency work out of working
hours. First call maintenance (e.g. oiling and greasing component parts of the
machine) is the responsibility of the operators, but most of them refuse to carry
out this function, claiming that they are too busy. As a result, many sites hire a
temporary contractor to do the job who is paid by the operations department.
SaltCo is one of the two salt product monopolies in the UK and operates
mainly in the home market. Most of the process controls have now been put
onto a computer-based system monitoring all the process operating conditions
and feeding them into one central station. The maintenance workforce is a
relatively small team with fewer than 30 maintenance technicians. The whole
plant is operated by five shifts of operators, with each shift working for 12
hours a day. Each shift is manned with one shift maintenance fitter and one
electrician.
 IJQRM GlassUK is one of the over-20 establishments of the leading glass-
17,9 manufacturing group in the world supplying flat glass for the building and
automobile industry. The site currently employs over 350 people with an
output of approximately 380,000 tonnes of glass per annum. The
manufacturing emphasis on the site is quality and customer service and
``World class manufacture'' a stated goal. Although the group is a market leader
1008 in glass for buildings and currently the largest supplier of automotive glass in
the world, it has been subjected to intensive business competition which has
taken place in the global (but predominantly European) arena since the 1990s.
Like WaterCo, GlassUK has been through massive redundancy in which the
production and maintenance workforce has been reduced by one-third. The
workload has been absorbed by the remaining production and maintenance
staff. The maintenance team consists of 44 craftsmen, 26 of whom work on the
day shift and 18 on a six-shift system to cover breakdown services on shift.
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PrintersLtd is a subsidiary of two leading newspaper titles but prints

newspapers for several titles. PrintersLtd has some 270 employees. The
maintenance craftsmen are divided into mechanical and electrical groups who
look after the whole plant by shift work. The printing plant, representing the
new era of newspaper printing technology and industrial relations in the
newspaper printing industry, was the first of a new generation of electronic
national newspaper ``factories''. Although newspapers can be published daily
or weekly, in the morning or in the afternoon, immediacy remains central to its
value. Keeping the plant running obviously becomes vital in the publication of
a newspaper. To ensure the continuity of plant operation, the vast majority of
maintenance work in PrintersLtd is done in-house by the maintenance
technicians.

Discussion
Traditionally, the relationship between the maintenance and the operation
functions is notoriously delicate (Husband, 1986), one in which the operators
run the equipment until it breaks down and then call in the maintenance
personnel to fix it. Both functions are highly interdependent and yet often find
it difficult to maintain a well balanced relationship. The problems are fairly
obvious. The operation function is often stretched to its limit to attain the
necessary output or to keep the plant running, yet must provide the
maintenance department access to its plant and equipment for maintenance
work or safety inspection. Similarly, the maintenance function may be
frequently under pressure to meet its workload but must find the resources to
respond to yet another urgent call from the operation function. The balance
between the two departments is not easy to achieve but is clearly of vital
importance to the overall effectiveness of the firm.
A common feature of all four firms studied was their intensified use of
production equipment, which has not only contributed to an increased
maintenance workload but also highlighted the inadequacy of their
maintenance approach. On average, less than 50 per cent of the maintenance
 workers surveyed in this study felt that the maintenance techniques currently Implementing
used by their firm were appropriate (see Table III). Most of them considered TPM in plant
that their maintenance work has been increasingly fire-fighting. Three out of maintenance
the four firms (with the exception of PrintersLtd) have had a maintenance audit
or benchmarking study carried out by an external consultancy body in recent
years (see Table I). The results of these studies typically pointed to the need for
a more proactive approach to maintenance management and greater 1009
integration between the production and maintenance function. In other words,
maintenance should be treated as a strategic function to be more closely linked
with other activities in the firm such as quality improvement strategies and
corporate strategy. These recommendations bear strong resemblance to that
advocated in the TPM philosophy, which requires the development of a
preventative maintenance programme for the life-cycle of the equipment and
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the involvement of operators in maintaining the equipment in order to

maximise its overall efficiency and effectiveness (Riis et al., 1997).
In response to their increasingly inadequate maintenance regime, all four
companies have attempted, to a greater or lesser extent, to promote a closer
integration between the production/operation and the maintenance
departments by introducing the concept of TPM in order to improve the overall
plant efficiency. The driving force came mainly from the maintenance
departments, which were keen to transfer some of the basic maintenance tasks
to their production/operation counterparts. The motivation behind this was to
ease the workload of the maintenance workforce so that they could have more
time to deal with the more serious cases or work on plant improvement for the
long term. A further rationale was that if the operators had to be responsible for
the machine, then they might operate it more carefully, thus reducing the
chance of machine breakdown. However, the promotion of TPM or the attempt
to involve operators in basic maintenance has been overshadowed by
organisational barriers of various nature.

Number of replies
Techniques WaterCo SaltCo GlassUK PrintersLtd

Question 1: Which of the following maintenance techniques are used at work?

Preventive maintenance 72/31/7a 0/0/11 1/5/8 11/9/7
Condition monitoring 5/31/25 0/1/9 0/3/7 1/9/6
Breakdown maintenance 26/35/8 17/7/2 6/6/2 13/11/3
Reliability-centred maintenance 4/15/19 0/0/11 0/0/8 1/3/7
a
Note: figures represent number of replies on mostly, often and seldom respectively

Question 2: Do you think the maintenance techniques currently used by the company are
appropriate?
Yes (%) 73 44 20 57 Table III.
No (%) 14 37 40 25 Selected survey results
Not sure (%) 13 19 40 14 on maintenance work
 IJQRM For WaterCo, the barriers lie mainly in the fact that the two departments
17,9 operate as two different cost centres with ever tightening budgets and
shrinking workforces. Taking on maintenance work would mean more work
with no extra resources for the operations department. Additionally, the
maintenance department was approached by a strong bid from an external firm
in 1994 which committed the management team of the department to a nervous
1010 search for ways to improve their maintenance services. Among other
initiatives, the internal customer concept was initiated in 1995 with annual
customer surveys started in 1995, the customer being the operations
department. A customer care course was run in 1995 by two maintenance
managers and the training manager to improve employees' customer
awareness and enhance their service to customers. The maintenance
department has improved customer relationships by focusing on the services it
provides against a five-year plan to ensure its customers' loyalty. By setting up
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service level agreements (SLAs) for all sites, the department agreed and
promised to guarantee levels of service to be complied with, thereby
demonstrating service consistency, delivery performance, and service
durability and maintainability. Many quality-related initiatives have been
adopted by the maintenance department in order to maximise their customer's
satisfaction with their service. A strong message from the maintenance
department to the operations department was that ``we are your best service
provider. We offer you best value for money, so continue to use us instead of
external service providers''. The problem is that, the stronger this message is,
the more difficult it becomes for the maintenance craftsmen to shift their basic
maintenance tasks to the operators. The management team of the operations
department was noncommittal about the initiatives although they would talk
about it in their meetings with the management team of the maintenance
department. But the operators would not even consider it. Every so often, the
maintenance department management team would try the TPM idea on their
counterpart who would elaborate on the difficult situation they were facing (e.g.
pressure of workload, tight budget, operators' resistance to maintenance tasks).
As a result, no plan of TPM or something similar to it could be drawn up
officially, although in private, individual operators and maintenance craftsmen
do help out each other in order to make life easier.
In SaltCo, changes have been made to bring the production and maintenance
function closer together since 1995 when the new operations director was
appointed. The new director has played a vital role in shaping the new
maintenance arrangement with ``modern concepts'' like giving people more
autonomy at work and ``blurring the edge'' of skills and demarcations. In
principle, first call maintenance (simple routine maintenance work) is the
responsibility of operators. As part of their duties, they are to look after the
basic mechanical and cleaning type of work such as oiling a pump and
sweeping the operating area, etc. They should also undertake ``plant care'' and
correctly log these activities and materials used. But in practice, there was a
reported minority group of operators who neither had the aptitude nor the
 attitude to take up their new role properly. This is where the communication Implementing
and co-operation link between the maintenance and the operations group is TPM in plant
weakened. Yet, the management turns a blind eye to this situation because they maintenance
``don't want to put too much pressure on people to upset them''. Moreover, ``the
recruiting method of the company is terrible'', according to a maintenance
technician. ``It is jobs for the needy and not jobs for the best'' because SaltCo has
redeployed manual semi-skilled workers to look after the machine when the 1011
plant was automated in the early 1990s. The benevolent management policy
appears to have brought a two-edged effect of both commitment from many of
the employees and in others, inefficiency to the business, not to mention the
frustration of the maintenance people. That is not to suggest that there is no
unmotivated worker in the maintenance group.
In GlassUK, most people interviewed felt that there was good
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communication on site, especially between the production and maintenance

function. The operators can usually give the craftsmen ``a fair idea of what the
problem was as they know the plant well enough'' (a maintenance technician on
GlassUK). Production and maintenance supervisors hold meetings regularly
(each week) to review performance and analyse major problems on both lines.
This allows the production people to comment on maintenance work. However,
the operators' role in maintenance has been very little, ``depending on who the
people are'' (a maintenance technician on GlassUK). Officially, the operators'
resistance to TPM takes a different form than that in WaterCo.
In an attempt to increase output, reduce manpower cost while maximising
plant availability and reliability, a series of management initiatives were
launched. TPM and one-line concept were the two major ones which were in the
process of being negotiated with the joint trade unions prior to their
implementation.
At the time of this study, the TPM initiative had been on the agenda for 12
months and some of its elements had been implemented. Every employee has
been taking turns to go on a team-building course for the initiatives of
teamworking and TPM. According to the initiative, TPM, (also called plant
care), ``is about all the members of a multi-disciplinary team pulling together to
assure no breakdown, no waste and no accident in a manufacturing system''.
This involves improving the plant through the activity of improvement groups
and the development of skills of the workforce. Both aims are focused on
optimising the productive capability of the manufacturing unit. The operators
were to be more careful with the equipment they use. They were to be trained
by their maintenance counterparts to carry out basic maintenance tasks (called
``task sharing'') which would be set by the maintenance technicians.
The idea of one-line concept was to remove any demarcation between groups
of the workforce and integrate them into one team. Although teamwork did
exist within hot end, cold end, quality section, day engineering and shift
engineering, greater intergroup integration was considered necessary with a
common goal and a unified approach to maximise utilisation of resources.
 IJQRM Unfortunately, the negotiations between management and the joint trade
17,9 unions have had limited success without the guarantee of no compulsory
redundancy from the management.
People are willing to have flexibility in exchange for stability (a trade union representative).
Line concept will work better without job reduction. There is no trust at the moment. You
can't move forward without trust (a maintenance supervisor).
1012
Motivation and satisfaction are low at the moment because of the impending redundancy (a
manufacturing technician).
Some people resent the idea. They have fear of the unknown, they don't want to do it in case
more tasks come forward. But we do help the maintenance lads if they are stuck. Everybody
mucks in in this job (an operator).
Individuals do try to help out from time to time, but until TU agrees, it won't be official. We
had a lot of pressure from headquarters in the last two years to reduce headcount. In the past,
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we always had voluntary redundancy. But this year compulsory redundancy will happen.
The plant was close to strike action earlier on because of the job loss threat. So the trade
unions are not co-operative on any issues now. The potential redundancy has over-shadowed
every change that was planned. People refuse to do flexible things now (the line engineer).

It was obvious that the GlassUK management, sailing in an adverse business

environment, would have a tough period ahead trying to reduce the workforce
on the one hand and trying to sell their management initiatives on the other.
Without a stable condition, the idea of forging a new working ethos which
focuses on flexibility and co-operation is unlikely to transform into reality.
In PrintersLtd, the work relationship between the maintenance and
production department was good. There has been a tradition for the production
workers (the pressmen) to carry out some basic maintenance work while the
maintenance craftsmen look after the rest. Like its counterparts in the other three
companies, the maintenance department hoped that the pressmen could take up
more responsibility on basic maintenance, but this hope proved difficult to realise
because of the production and financial pressure the firm was subjected to. With
its clients operating in the most competitive newspaper market in the world, the
highly perishable nature of the newspaper product and the tight production
schedule has forced PrintersLtd to put production as the first priority. Most
maintenance work was only carried out as an immediate necessity.
Everybody is panicking trying to get the work done in advance. We are getting the presses
ready, preparing the work for the next shift. The company is shooting themselves in the foot a
little bit. They are trying to get too far ahead because a newspaper is a highly perishable
product. The maintenance guys would value the extra time to work on the machines. But they
don't have the chance (a pressmen overseer).

Although most of the maintenance staff and production workers interviewed

considered that the maintenance function was managed effectively or as
effective as it could be, given the conditions, only a small majority (57 per cent)
of maintenance surveyees thought that the maintenance techniques currently
used by the company were appropriate. The reason for that is simple, as
summarised by the workers interviewed.
 We used to have a maintenance shift on a Sunday. All we did was to maintain the presses. Implementing
The printers would do the little bits and pieces and the maintenance engineers would have a
whole day just to do whatever they needed to do. Since late 1996, we started to print from TPM in plant
Monday to Sunday, so what happens at the moment is any maintenance that needs doing is maintenance
having to be done in between runs. It is not designated times, just an hour here and an hour
there. Sometimes it is not long enough. During the week we had designated time for
maintenance, but now we do so many different publications and supplements that
maintenance time is being fitted in around production time (a mechanical engineer). 1013
If any improvement can be made in the maintenance function, it would be more time
dedicated to maintenance and a specific maintenance crew [of two or three men] just to do
maintenance on the production side. There should be a small team in the production to go
round to do the basic maintenance work so that the other pressmen can concentrate on
printing without having to stop printing to do the maintenance [i.e. sub-division of tasks
within the production team]. But at the moment the firm cannot afford to take any men off the
production (to form the maintenance group) nor can they afford to take any men on. It is a
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catch 22 situation (a pressmen overseer).

It appears that teamworking and TPM between the production and

maintenance departments is not only an issue of principle (industrial relations
and departmental barriers), but also an issue of practicability (lack of
manpower and adequate skill).
We barely have enough people to cope as it is without doing other people's job as well (an
operator of WaterCo).
We have no time to do maintenance, very tight on men (a pressman of PrintersLtd).
We do try to spot things before they happen but no hands on maintenance yet. There are jobs
we [the operators] can do with some extra training. But again no manpower to cover it (a shift
manager of GlassUK).

In addition, occupational group difference between the production and

maintenance groups serves as another barrier. Although personal friendship
may flourish between people in the two groups, they tend to judge each other
rather more harshly at a collective level than they do at an individual level
(Crozier and Friedberg, 1977). A common reason for the operators' resistance to
the idea of TPM is its perceived unfairness and one-sidedness. For the majority
of production people interviewed, having a role in the first line maintenance
means doing more work but without any more money. ``You are doing more all
the time and you ask yourself: what's next'' (an operator in SaltCo). For some
operators, taking responsibility in basic maintenance tasks represents a
unilateral practice of teamworking and co-operation.
It is not fair that only the production people share maintenance work but maintenance never
share the operators' job. It should be a two-way thing. The maintenance [staff] won't be
required to do our operation job as they think it is a waste of their time [for skilled people to
do semi-skilled job] (an operator of GlassUK).
If we are to work as a team, then they should be doing our job and not just us doing theirs
(another operator of SaltCo).

Interestingly, there are a minority of maintenance staff who do not want the
operators to get their hands on the equipment.
 IJQRM We prefer them [operators] not to touch anything (an instrumentation technician of SaltCo).
17,9 Mechanical wise they can tell you what's gone wrong and they usually get it right. But
electrical wise they haven't got a clue. It is confusing. They tell you it was this that has gone
wrong. You spend a lot of time checking it only to find there is nothing wrong with it. Then
you look somewhere else and it turned out to be something entirely different that has gone
wrong. It was nowhere near what they [operators] had suggested (an electrical technician of
WaterCo).
1014
This scenario may not happen every time to every member of the maintenance
personnel, but it somehow reflects the skill gap which has to be filled if the
operators are to be more involved in the maintenance function.

Conclusion
The changing needs of modern manufacturing and the heightened global
competition necessitate a re-examination of the role that improved maintenance
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management plays in enhancing firms' competitiveness (Riis et al., 1997). In

response to the competitive pressure, ``many firms placed strong emphasis on
functional flexibility among process and maintenance workers'' (NEDO, 1986,
p. 6). In the case study firms, there have been attempts by the management and
the maintenance workers to involve the production people in basic maintenance
work. But success has been limited for various reasons, with negative effects,
as summarised in Table IV.
Authors on TPM have identified that successful implementation of TPM
requires top management support and commitment, a greater sense of
ownership and responsibility from the operators, co-operation and involvement
of both the operators and the maintenance workers, and importantly, an
attitude change from everybody from ``that's not my job'' to ``this is what I can
do to help'' (e.g. Nakajima, 1988; Patterson et al., 1995, 1996; Tajiri and Gotoh,
1992; Yeomans and Millington, 1997). Yet, all these essential ingredients have
been missing in the four case study companies. The somewhat unpredictable
and uncostable nature of maintenance work has made most production
departments shy away from this ``necessary evil''. In large companies like
WaterCo in which each department forms an independent financial unit,
departmental co-ordination and agreement is difficult to achieve when they are
all trying desperately to keep their operating cost down. In GlassUK, although
closer co-operation between maintenance and production is generally seen to be
desirable, and although the company has gone much further down the road
with the initiatives of teamworking and TPM among all four companies, the
implementation of the principles of TPM is met with opposition from the
production team through the trade union. While TPM was rejected or deterred
mainly for political reasons in WaterCo and GlassUK, in SaltCo and
PrintersLtd, the initiatives of teamworking and TPM between maintenance and
production people have taken a more relaxed form. In SaltCo, the ``plant care''
initiative did not take root because of management's tolerance of poor
behaviour. In PrintersLtd, the major barrier to TPM is the lack of manpower to
cover the workload.
 WaterCo SaltCo GlassUK PrintersLtd Implementing
TPM in plant
Barriers Lack of senior Senior Union/worker Lack of senior maintenance
management management's resistance management
support tolerance of poor support
behaviour
Tight budget Tight budget Tight budget 1015
Pressure of Pressure of Pressure of work
workload workload
Contradiction of Contradiction
management of other
initiatives organisational
change
Effects Inefficient use of Inefficient use of Inefficient use of Inefficient use of
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skilled maintenance maintenance maintenance maintenance

workers on simple workers workers workers
tasks
Frustration of maintenance workers on being called on simple maintenance
tasks and on operators not doing what they are supposed to do, i.e. plant care
Suggestions Support and commitment from the senior management of TPM
Alignment of management initiatives and organisational changes
Financial support for TPM related activities, e.g. more manpower,
training, etc.
Cultural change for the operators to take on plant care
Giving more autonomy and responsibility to operators Table IV.
Greater communication and co-operation between operations and Findings of TPM
maintenance depts implementation

In all four case study companies, if there was any practice of TPM and
teamworking between the maintenance and production/operation people, this
practice only existed informally, based on sound personal relationship and
empathy towards each other rather than through any formal implementation of
the initiatives. With entrenched departmental barriers and shopfloor
resistance, managements have not forced or been able to force the issue either.
In day-to-day work, the production and maintenance people do try to help each
other out at work informally whenever possible. But it is far more difficult to
have this mutual support formalised and printed on a piece of paper.
Evidence from this study suggests that implementing TPM is by no means
an easy task, which is heavily burdened by organisational barriers such as
those found in the four case study companies. These barriers will be even less
surmountable without a strong backing from the top management, which has
been largely lacking in these four firms.

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