Sena Düzgün (Writer)
24 April 2024
What is TPM? What can we say about the importance of TPM?
TPM stands for Total Productivity Maintenance.
TPM is a maintenance management approach that foresees autonomous maintenance with the participation of all employees in production and service processes, adopts a prevention approach rather than troubleshooting, and maximizes machine and equipment efficiency.
TPM aims to change the company culture by improving employees, machines and equipment.
It has detailed features such as productivity measurement, evaluation, setting targets and comparing the actual situation according to the targets.
- Provides planning and implementation tools for the management of periodic maintenance
- Provides autonomous management tools for the orderly execution of preventive maintenance activities
- Ensures the calculation of maintenance periods and spare parts needs in line with the data collected from production
- Organizes methodological studies to find the root causes of failures
- Provides statistical process control (SPC) tools with data collected from production
- It has functions such as instantly notifying the relevant persons in case of malfunctions (maintenance call), measuring and reporting the reaction time of the maintainer and the time to eliminate the malfunction.
It is seen in the TPM methodology that it is aimed to increase availability as much as possible.
In the breakdown of A,P,Q, the parameter that decreases the OEE value the most is the availability as seen in our field experiences. It is extremely valuable to be able to apply the TPM approaches I mentioned above that will increase availability. It is no longer possible to do it competitively with forms and declarations on paper.
With a good MES partner, all these processes can be managed in a fast, secure, traceable and reportable way in a paperless environment.
Why MES is important and necessary?
For successful TPM, it is necessary to analyze the current situation with concrete data and present the problems to the attention of managers. So how accurately and precisely can you measure this current situation?
Statistical Process control requires detailed and accurate data collected from the field. How much can you collect or how far is the accuracy from 100%.
What cannot be measured cannot be improved.
What are the main objectives of TPM? What does it bring?
The goal of TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is the same as the goal of companies, to create a profitable and sustainable organization.
If we need to list some of them;
- Zero Failure
- Zero Quality Defects.
- Zero Stock
- Zero Pollution
- Zero Work Accidents
The realization of these items passes through a properly managed TPM system, and a properly managed TMP system needs a properly adapted MES system. I can give an example to make this need clearer.
For example; A company that is not an MES user has to operate its TPM manually and is dependent on the human factor and therefore has to accept the errors brought by this dependence.
But this is not the case for companies with a correctly designed MES system. Records related to an event such as equipment signals, Panel session logs, "Failure Intervention" operations are processed accurately in the MES system and presented to the User with accurate analysis and fast feedback. In this way, the MES user can perform error-free and efficient TPM management.
What are the benefits of digitalization of maintenance processes?
Digitalization is the process of digitizing accessible information and existing resources (e.g. your documents, processes) so that they can be read by a computer.
Achieving TPM targets is also an important position for digitalization.
Tracking maintenance time manually is sometimes a forgettable issue. This can lead to serious costly problems, but in the digital environment, we can automatically track this time, or during the intervention, instead of going to the office to get the manual of this machine, we can access this information from any computer at the machine in the field and perform faster maintenance operations. It even allows us to access operations such as what has been done before from anywhere instead of looking for them in files and archives.
In today's environment where everything is speed, digitalization provides us with serious speed. The rapid intervention of the maintenance process also means that the time is shortened and more production can be made.
What can we say about the relationship between MES System and Autonomous Maintenance?
One of the elements of autonomous maintenance is that the operator at the machine knows the production machine well, is aware of possible malfunctions and understands their leading symptoms and takes the necessary measures or alerts the relevant units.
Industrial Panel PCs used in MES systems are a great interface for operators as they are in autonomous communication with machines via PLC or I/O cards.
It can see automatically detected faults.
When maintenance personnel are triggered by notifications and come to the machine, they can receive, read and even follow the instructions related to maintenance operations without paper through these Panel PCs. This will significantly increase the impact of everyone from maintenance personnel to operators on process management in a positive way.
Tracking equipment life cycles will increase control in the integrated system.
MES systems that allow Anamoli tracking will prevent possible malfunctions or faulty product production on the machine.
What are the important KPIs in maintenance processes?
There are two important KPIs used to determine whether maintenance processes are being operated correctly.
- MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure): Mean time between failures is the estimated time between natural failures of a mechanical or electronic system during normal system operation. MTBF can be calculated as the arithmetic mean time between failures of a system. The purpose here is to give information about when the next failure will occur. It is also aimed to extend the MTBF in planned maintenance.
- MTTR (Mean Time to Repair): The average time until repair. It refers to the average expected repair time from the detection of the fault. This criterion is the basic criterion of maintenance services. If we define the MTTR value briefly. It gives us the time between the best product before the failure and the best product after the failure is repaired.
Can you tell us about Predictive Maintenance management with MES System?
We can say that Predictive Maintenance is to perform maintenance correctly and adequately before deterioration occurs by taking data from the monitored equipment.
It is the same logic as the periodic maintenance of vehicles such as 10 thousand. Just as certain parts need to change and undergo maintenance after a certain mileage, the same logic applies to molds or machines in the production area. When a certain part is produced, some parts and equipment need to be checked. The difference is that there is no maintenance schedule as clear as vehicles in the production area. This is where the MES solution comes into play. It can save us from more maintenance costs by processing data such as production quantity, ambient temperature, vibration collected from the production site and estimating the maintenance time more clearly.
What is the contribution of MES Systems to maintenance processes?
- Shutdown Loss, Operating Time
- Failure Losses
- Setup and Setting Losses
- Exchange Losses of coils, cutter blades, etc.
- Start Losses (production start and end), Net Working (working by producing) Time
- Speed Losses
- Small Stops (Chokote) Idle Waiting, Value Added Uptime
- Defective Product Losses
The contribution of MES systems to maintenance processes is that they have a direct impact on improving these 8 losses.
The situation we often encounter in company field analyzes is that the availability value is very low due to the fact that it cannot be managed correctly, because it works with longer setup times than it should be, because planned maintenance is more in both time and quantity, because it cannot clearly track the amount of waste-scrap and eliminate the root cause, and so on and so on.
It predicts that it can use 320 minutes of the 480 minutes of its shift due to these faulty measurements or not measuring at all, and reaches an OEE value with the performance and quality values obtained from the production during this period.
However, when we remove these erroneous evaluations, it will be revealed that the measured OEE values are actually 20% less when we calculate from the availability value of 400 minutes that 320 minutes of workable time can actually be reduced to 400 minutes. Likewise, companies with a defective production rate of 1% can reduce the amount up to one tenth when they identify the root causes and work at this point. Even this gain is of great value in itself.