Access Type

Open Access Dissertation

Date of Award

January 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

First Advisor

Ratna Chinnam

Abstract

Maintenance has assumed increased importance in manufacturing as companies look for ways to gain an advantage over their competitors. The philosophical benefits of jointly implementing Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) programs in concert with other lean and quality programs have been discussed in the manufacturing literature. However, there is an absence of real-life implementation studies for objective assessment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the very first longitudinal study to investigate the implementation of TPM programs at a large global OEM across several regions and facilities using objective data collected across all key functions and outcomes. We study a group of facilities that implemented the entire lean and TPM programs in unison along with another group that implemented the TPM program several years after the lean implementation. We examine the quality of the TPM implementation and their impact on the company’s key performance indicators. These key performance indicators include maintenance metrics, throughput targets, quality targets, and cost targets. We also examine the results of employee engagement surveys across these different implementation groups. Last, we use a newly researched lean maturity guide to help assess the maturity of the two implementation regions. Results reveal favorable outcomes for the groups that implemented the programs in unison. However, results also reveal that other facilities could reach the same level of implementation even with a later start. The study also investigates seemingly significant aberrations in maintenance metrics even in facilities with mature TPM programs and reveals the need for better performance definition and measurement systems.

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