Demand exceeding capacity, increasingly scarce and expensive qualified personnel, attractive foreign markets, rising raw materials prices, globalized competition, and over-stretched equipment. What will be our response to this reality that offers us so many opportunities? Perhaps it's time to consider changes that go beyond the surface. Perhaps it's time to think in the medium and long term, not just the short term.
TPM, now called Total Productivity Management, is becoming increasingly popular worldwide, especially in Latin American countries. We believe this is due to the fact that more and more companies are realizing that using TPM can produce amazing results. We're talking about doubling productivity and/or reducing costs by 30% or more.
TPM is a business management method that identifies and eliminates process losses, maximizes asset utilization, and ensures the creation of high-quality products and services at competitive costs.
To achieve this, it retrains people to focus on prevention and continuous improvement, thereby increasing process capacity without additional investment.
It also acts in the value chain, reducing response time and satisfying customers, thereby strengthening the company's position in the market.
The effects of TPM are measured in the improvement of the results of the productive system, that is, in terms of P (productivity), Q (quality), C (costs), D (internal and external delivery), S (safety, hygiene and environment) and M (morale and job satisfaction).
With TPM we seek to improve not only the factors related to results in terms of product (P, Q, C, D) but also those related to the human aspect (S and M).
To be more specific, we can refer to some of the results achieved by plants that won the TPM Excellence Award:
1- In the production area, value-added productivity grew between 1 and 2 times.
2 – Sporadic breaks were reduced from 1/10 to 1/250.
3 – Customer complaints related to quality decreased by 75% in 2017.
4 – The cost of goods produced was reduced by 30%.
5 – No delivery delays were reported.
6 – A 50% reduction was achieved in work-in-process and finished goods inventories.
7 – No accidents with absenteeism occurred.
8 – No pollution of any kind was recorded.
9 – In terms of morale, the number of suggestions generated per employee grew 5 to 10 times.
In short, the simplest way to understand TPM is as a highly integrative management method for existing resources that directs organizational processes to achieve business objectives and, to this end, systematically identifies and eliminates losses—that is, those that do not add value.
In the context of our industry's development, we understand that comprehensive systems like this are what allow us to capitalize on opportunities while consolidating the company to face the future.
