Conceptual Analysis and Survey of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Relationship

Abstract

Maintenance is an important issue that needs to be addressed during the design and manufacturing or building of a system. Both Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) have its own concepts and principles as a maintenance strategy to give impact to the performance and reliability of the system. Therefore, in this research, the TPM will be studied with RCM to show their relationship. Based on the conceptual analysis, the author will analyze publications from journals, books, and articles to find all related information, such as genealogy, definition, concepts, and principle, and implementation of both strategy. The conceptual method used is Näsi’s four elements of conceptual analysis and a questionnaire survey method which has been answered electronically to study the current maintenance strategies in the real industries and to relate it to TPM and RCM. The result of the study shows that TPM had started in 1970 while RCM started in the 1960s, but the foundation of TPM and RCM was started in 1950s with Breakdown Maintenance (BM). TPM is basically about elimination of faults through day-today activities involving the entire force work while the concept of RCM is to improve equipment reliability. The objective of TPM is to achieve zero breakdowns, zero defects, and zero accidents while TPM is to preserve the functions. Although both are using different tools but both are linked together through the Lean Tool and can increase product quality, equipment reliability, increase safety, and increase profit. From the survey result, most of the respondent comes from the companies that implementing traditional maintenance (PM and CM) rather than TPM and RCM. TPM mostly can be implemented in big plant industries while RCM can be applied in small or medium size plant.