Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Practices And Manufacturing Performance: The Moderating Effect Of Types Of Production Processes

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Date
2010-05
Authors
Mad Lazim, Halim
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
The importance of maintenance has become the main focus in the manufacturing environment. New technologies and advancements in the manufacturing industry have driven many companies to implement reliable maintenance program in order to avoid stoppages and disruptions of equipment from occurring in their daily operations. Total productive maintenance (TPM), a resource-emphasized approach moves the paradigm of maintenance by putting emphasis on total employee involvement in the maintenance activities. Operators and all employees should be actively involved in a maintenance programme that enable to avoid any disruptions, breakdowns, stoppages, failures, and so forth in order to improve manufacturing performance. Therefore, in the highly competitive manufacturing industries, the ability and reliability of equipment that well-maintained is very important in order to achieve desired manufacturing performance namely cost reduction, high quality products, on-time delivery, and flexibility. Furthermore, several studies in the literature argue that further research is required in the area of maintenance and operations management. In order to address this need, the study investigates the extent of TPM practices in the Malaysian manufacturing companies, to investigate the relationship between TPM practices and manufacturing performance and to investigate the moderating effect of type of production process in the TPM practices and manufacturing performance relationships. The study uses data collected from 106 manufacturing companies from various types of industries. The first research question was answered in order to examine the extent of TPM practices in the Malaysian manufacturing companies using the descriptive analysis. The result shows that TPM strategy and autonomous maintenance were the most TPM practices found in the Malaysian manufacturing companies. Meanwhile, on time delivery and high quality product becomes the main concerned in the Malaysian manufacturing companies. Overall, all participating companies were agreed all TPM practices and manufacturing performance were important. A model is hypothesized and analysed by hierarchical regression to answer the second research question and third research question. The results imply that TPM practices positively and significantly improved manufacturing performance. For instance, TPM strategy was positively and significantly related to cost, quality, delivery and flexibility. The significant moderating effects of type of production process were also found on the certain TPM practices and manufacturing performance relationships. The results imply that the rates of change on the TPM practices and manufacturing performance relationship were differed for batch, mass and continuous production processes. Contributions and limitations of the study also discussed accordingly.
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Keywords
The importance of maintenance has become the main focus , in the manufacturing environment
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