The Brahmastra of TPM

ECONOMIC LIBERALISATION has exposed Indian industry to the cold and cutting winds of international competition, since import barriers have been lifted and tariffs lowered. There are three ways that domestic manufacturers can react to this. One is to throw in the towel and retire from the field, as Mr. Ramesh Chauhan elected to do. The other is to throw a tantrum and cry for a ``level playing field'' (read continued protection) a la Rahul Bajaj and the ``Deshi'' brigade. And the third, most difficult but ultimately the best for the country, is to toughen up the organisation so that it can hold its own against the invaders. This has been the strategy of companies such as Sundram Fasteners Ltd. (SFL) of the TVS group and coming to their aid in this effort has been a Japanese manufacturing philosophy called total productive maintenance (TPM).

Among the many weaknesses that debilitate the typical Indian factory the most common are: abominable housekeeping, dirty machines, maintenance which is too little and too late, unsafe practices and hazardous factory environment, chaotic floor condition, haphazard tool management, weak quality systems, insufficiently trained and unmotivated workers, poorly defined operational procedures and insufficient administrative support. These in turn lead to poor equipment utilisation, inordinate loss of time, high accident rate, difficulty in maintaining delivery schedules, large percentage of scrap, high unwarranted costs, difficulty in maintaining delivery schedules and ultimately, poor customer satisfaction and loss of market.

TPM aims to create a system for achieving and maintaining zero breakdowns, zero defects and zero accidents. It also focuses on achieving marked improvement in the up-time of equipment and drastic reduction in costs. The TPM process involves nine basic activities: Autonomous maintenance, quality maintenance, planned maintenance, continuous improvements, employee education and training (all levels), initial control, safety environment, tooling management and TPM in the administration.

All this sounds esoteric but is actually rooted in common sense. Under the TPM scheme of things, the operator is responsible for keeping his machine clean and in good health and his workplace and tools tidy and orderly. He is trained not only in operational skills but also in identifying incipient breakdowns and preventing them. The machines are re-engineered, for example, by replacing opaque metal sheets by transparent acrylic, such that the operator can directly observe critical areas and detect abnormalities, example, drive belts losing tension or lubrication points not receiving oil, before they become critical.

TPM involves establishing basic conditions on the shopfloor, example, orderly arrangement of stock-in-process, maintaining floor free of scrap, oil and coolant spills and the like in order to smoothen production and sustain these conditions through standards. TPM means eliminating operating mistakes by providing adequate training, standardising procedure as well as providing clear information to the operator at the workplace. Under TPM, the operator is himself the quality inspector and follows a clearly laid out checking procedure.

TPM is about establishing clear safety rules and ensuring that every employee, regardless of rank, follows them rigorously and without dilution. It entails the maintenance of a hazard-free and healthy working environment. Under TPM, every employee is encouraged to constantly think of and implement ways, however small, to improve operations, quality, safety, cost control, logistics and time management. With TPM, the traditional responsibility boundaries between operator, supervisor, maintenance man, storekeeper, manager and administration person meld and merge.

Communication - both horizontal and vertical - is crucial. Any changes or improvements made to a machine or an operation or a method or a system should be made known not just across the shop but across the factory and even across all establishments in the group. What should ideally emerge is a well-knit organisation cohesively working towards a common goal - enhanced competitiveness and total customer satisfaction.

Of course, implementing TPM is not easy. It requires tremendous patience and perseverance and total commitment of the top management. As Mr. Suresh Krishna, Chairman and Managing Director of SFL, puts it, ``TPM is not achieved by inducting technology. That would be simple. It involves a change of heart and mind in every employee and this attitudinal change is extremely difficult to bring about. It entails thorough and constant education of the employees on the need, advantages, objectives, achievements and improvements. We conducted orientation programmes in the beginning for all of our employees in batches of 10 to 20 each during the first year and we conduct refresher courses every one to one and half years. TPM requires long term dedication. Perhaps the most difficult part of implementation is continuing the effort after the initial spurt of improvement.''

For the persons at the top wishing to implement TPM in their organisation, Mr. Suresh Krishna has a word of advice: ``The commitment at the top must be total, like relegion. And it must be long term. There are any number of organisation improvement techniques out there. Flitting from one to another will not do. The employees keep a keen eye on the management's faith. Any wavering will be detected and the employees will just abort the effort.''

It is now five years since TPM was introduced in SFL, starting first with cleaning up and bringing up to scratch individual ``example'' machines, then to a whole group of machines within a shop and later extending to all the manufacturing facilities, forming TPM circles, auditing the results, implementing improvements, re-auditing and broadcasting the improvements all over.

The results have been more than gratifying. In the last four years, the overall equipment effectiveness has shot up from less than 50 per cent to over 75 per cent. There has been a drastic reduction in production lead time, losses due to rejects, inventory, breakdowns and equipment failures. The accident rate (both major and minor) has been reduced to an unbelievable zero and, what is most satisfactory, the number of customer complaints about quality and delivery has come down from over 20 a month to almost nil.

Surprisingly, where one would have expected the maintenance costs to rise due to all that attention on this activity, the actual experience has been that after rising in the first two years, the maintenance cost has come down almost 20 per cent below the initial figure. Processes have been structured so that there is consistency and repeatability in the output. Most dramatic of all changes has been the physical working environment. Anyone visiting SFL's Padi factory today would never believe that it is over 30 years old. It is so spick and span that it could rival a Swiss watch factory.

Thanks to TPM, the company has been able to ride the recession of the late Nineties in the domestic automobile market and maintain a healthy bottomline despite a squeeze on the prices of its products on the one hand and increases in the wage bill, power tariffs and taxes on the other. As the finance director, Mr. V. Jagannathan, succinctly remarked, ``Without TPM's benefits, we may have gone under.''

SFL, most competitive in Asia

In a 1997 survey of 4,500 companies from 14 countries conducted by Asia Inc. and Arthur D. Little, SFL emerged as the 16th most competitive in the whole of Asia. Thanks to the enhanced competitiveness enabled by TPM, the company has been able to increase its exports by 23 per cent last year and expects to double that growth this year. SFL has won the supplier of the year award for radiator caps from General Motors (worldwide purchasing) for three consecutive years (1996 to 1998). In 1998, the company received the prestigious TPM Excellence Award from the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance.

TPM has also contributed a number of intangible benefits to SFL. A marked attitudinal change among employees has brought about a sense of ownership, increased their motivation and confidence to solve problems at their own levels and strive for improvement, introduced cost-consciousness in their thinking, improved their ability to work as a team, broken rigid boundaries between departments, enabled widespread sharing of knowledge and experience and created a company-wide sense of unity.

What next? ``We have still a long way to go,'' says Mr. Suresh Krishna. ``We have just reached a base level of competitiveness. Now we must benchmark ourselves against the best in the world in our line of business and strive to achieve that level.''

Can SFL's experience be duplicated in other Indian companies which may not have its excellent track of industrial relations (not a single day lost due to industrial action in the last 34 years of the company's existence)? Good IR is a help but not a rigid prerequisite, avers Mr. Suresh Krishna. After all, the physical environment and operational systems in the beginning at SFL were not different from other Indian engineering companies. In fact, he says, the effort of implementing TPM can lead to better industrial relations. What is a precondition, however, is the top management's wholehearted and sustained commitment to the TPM way.

A number of other Indian companies, such as Vikram Cements and TANFAC are implementing TPM. Mr. Suresh Krishna heads a committee set up by the Confederation of Indian Industry to assist companies wanting to implement TPM and says those interested are welcome to see what SFL is doing.

N. N. Sachitanand

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