Enhancing Productivity of CNC Machines by Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation. A Case Study

Abstract

Lean manufacturing is a business system that contributes to the growth of production efficiency and the company profit, by identifying and eliminating waste. TPM is one of the techniques used to eliminate production waste, being focused on the maintenance of production equipment, so as to increase their operation and efficiency, while ensuring the quality of production due to preventing the causes that lead to waste. In the present paper for the continuous improvement of the manufacturing process within the work cells equipped with CNC processing centers, TPM is implemented, which contributes to the optimization of predictive, preventive and corrective maintenance activities of production equipment, thus improving the efficiency of machine tools. TPM ensures maximum equipment efficiency due to the elimination of unforeseen equipment downtime, respectively increasing the speed and availability of the machine. The research is based on a case study from automotive industry. Monitoring the daily activities of the equipment is done through the TPM component, namely Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) which presents the situation in the manufacturing process. The waste related to technological equipment were identified, such as: incorrect operation of the work equipment, unplanned shutdowns, respectively damages that occurred in the manufacturing process.