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ABSTRACT
A large number of manufacturing industries in India have started implementing Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) initiatives to have non-interrupted and high productive environment. TPM is an innovative approach that optimizes equipment working conditions and enhances work environment by utilizing the best autonomous maintenance (JH) practices. A study on Jishu-Hozen (JH) pillar implementation in a process industry is presented in this paper. The JH activities are carried out in a phased manner which enhances operators skill towards up keeping of their own equipment. This reduces the minor stoppages that occur at frequent intervals thereby increasing the life cycle of the equipment. The implementation of holistic TPM initiatives remained very successful and benefitted the industry in terms of higher productivity, more profit, lower breakdowns and losses, improved quality etc. JH practices in TPM also enhance the morale of all the employees and created safe and healthy working environment.
1. INTRODUCTION
In today's competitive environment, the industrial organizations are striving hard for improving their operational performance. For this, industries have adopted various techniques and strategies to reduce employee/operator related losses. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is one of such methodology that optimizes equipment reliability and ensures efficient management of plant resources through employee's involvement (Ahuja and Khamba, 2009). TPM effectively constructs enterprise capacity and enhance enterprises competitiveness (Shen, 2013). TPM is designed for improving the entire life of the equipment with the participation of employees at all the levels. The TPM practice not only reduces the maintenance cost of the equipment, but also increases the quality and delivery performance (McKone et al., 2001).
As the technology progresses, the equipments/facilities become more complex. The operators become preoccupied with production, while maintenance workers focus solely on maintenance which causes division between operation and maintenance personnel. This leads towards reduction in efficiency of existing equipments/facilities. Among the eight pillars of TPM, Jishu Hozen (JH) as one of the important pillar was designed to improve such characteristic (Shirose, 1996). JH provides the best practices to be carried out at shop floor to upkeep employee/operators performance. Jishu-Hozen (JH) pillar is geared towards developing operators to be able to take care of small maintenance tasks, thus freeing up the skilled maintenance people to spend time on more value added activity and technical repairs....