Total Productive Maintenance, or Total Productive Manufacturing, is a continuous improvement effort involving every aspect of a company. The concept requires abandoning a reactive management approach to process equipment failure and understanding that a maintenance program includes monitoring and improving equipment performance.
When TPM was introduced in our paint shops approximately three years ago, it was considered another new program that someone in management had heard about and wanted to try. It was assigned to one of our finishing engineers to implement with corporate council. The operations staff didn't want to assume any of the daily maintenance activity because they were already structured to have one person do all of that work. Needless to say, TPM was not initially embraced.