Traditionally
operated garment industries are facing problems like low productivity, longer
production lead time, high rework and rejection, poor line balancing, low flexibility
of style changeover etc. These problems were addressed in this study by the
implementation of lean tools like cellular manufacturing, single piece flow,
work standardization, just in time production etc.
1 Total
Productive Maintenance (TPM)
Machine
breakdown is one of the major headaches for people related to production. The
reliability of the equipment on the shop floor is very important because if any
one of the machines is down the entire shop
floor productivity may be nil. The tool that takes care of these sudden
breakdowns and awakes maintenance as well as production workers to minimize
these unplanned breakdowns is called total productive maintenance. Total
Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance program, which involves a newly
defined concept for maintaining plants and equipment. The goal of the TPM
program is to increase production, increase employee morale and job
satisfaction. (Bisen and Srivastava,
2009, p. 175)
TPM is set of
tools, which when implemented in an organization as a whole gives the best
utilization of machines with least disruption of production. The set of tools
are called pillars of TPM and they are shortly described here and illustrated
in a TPM diagram (Figure 2).
2.1 5S :
The first
pillar of TPM is called 5S, which organize and cleans work place; this helps to
make problems visible and attracts the attentions of everyone. Brief
description of 5S elements are as follows:
Sort: The first
step in making things cleaned up and organized.
Set In Order:
Organize, identify and arrange everything in a work area.
Shine: Regular
cleaning and maintenance.
Standardize:
Make it easy to maintain, simplify and standardize.
Sustain:
Maintain what has been achieved.
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| FIGURE 2: TPM diagram - Pillars of TPM (Kumar, 2008, p. 217) |
2.2 Autonomous maintenance
This is about
the involvement of production workers in the day to day general maintenance of
machines like cleaning, lubricating etc. which saves the time of skilled
maintenance person at the same time the production workers are made more
responsible to their machines.
2.3 Kaizen
Kaizen is for
small improvements, but carried out on a continual basis and involve all people
in the organization. Kaizen requires no or little investment. The principle
behind is that “a very large number of small improvements are more effective in
an organizational environment than a few improvements of large value.” This
pillar is aimed at reducing losses in the workplace that affect our
efficiencies (Kumar, 2008, p.220).
2.4 Planned maintenance
It addresses
the proactive approach of maintenance activities. This involves four types of
maintenance namely preventive maintenance, breakdown maintenance, corrective
maintenance, and maintenance prevention.
2.5 Quality Maintenance
It is aimed
towards customer delight through the highest quality and defect free
manufacturing. In this system, one has to take care of parts which affect
product quality and try to eliminate or modify them to give customer superior
quality.
2.6 Training
Employees
should be trained such that they can analyze the root cause of the problem.
General know how of the problem is not sufficient rather they should be able to
know why the problem is occurring and how to eliminate it. For this employee
need continuous training, ultimately; the entire employee should be multi-skilled
and should solve the problem in their area by themselves.
2.7 Office TPM
This tool is
about increasing the efficiencies in office (administrative) activities. This
tool works the problems like communication issues, data retrieval processes,
management information systems, office equipment losses, up to date information
about inventories etc.
2.8 Safety Health and Environment
In this area,
the focus is to create a safe workplace and a surrounding area that would not
be damaged by our process or procedures. This pillar will play an active role
in each of the other pillars on a regular basis. Safe work environment means
accident free, fire less and it should not damage the health of workers.