TPM Case Study: How Tecate Gets TPM Right (Part 1)

Total productive maintenance (TPM) does not have a great reputation in American industry these days.

A study conducted in 2006 by The Manufacturing Research Center showed that only 38 percent of U.S. manufacturers surveyed were currently implementing TPM. Of those implementing TPM, 37 percent said they weren’t making as much progress as expected in this area and 27 percent said they were hardly making any progress. Only 8 percent called their progress “excellent”.

Of respondents who said they were not implementing Total Productive Maintenance, 24 percent characterized it as “not important at the present time”, 12 percent said they “already had done it”, 19 percent were planning to do it next year, 37 percent “may do it in the future” and 8 percent never heard of it.

Other Total Productive Maintenance surveys in recent years elicited these additional statistics:

– 27 percent of respondents said TPM was a current business initiative, yet only 6 percent claimed to be fully operating it;

– 5 percent of respondents characterized TPM as their plant’s approach to maintenance and reliability.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Maybe the problem isn’t Total Productive Maintenance, per se. Maybe it’s the way this initiative is being used. Most plants and companies that “have implemented” or “are implementing” or “won’t implement” TPM translate it purely as:

• a program to clean and paint machines; OR,
• giving operators some basic lubrication and maintenance tasks; OR,
• a means to put people “to good use”; OR,
• a reason to cut maintenance staff.

Shortsighted approaches such as these were never the intention of the Japanese Institute for Plant Maintenance when it developed TPM in 1971 as “a path to better manufacturing, with a constant focus on the creation of value.”

The true translation — might it be proper to say a new and improved translation? — is being used today by Cervecería Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma, one of the largest brewers of beer in Latin America. Known throughout this company as Mantenimiento Alto Desempeño (MAD), or translated as High-Performance Maintenance, the concept of TPM is alive and well at the company’s six plants in Mexico. Perhaps the best example is at CCM’s brewery in Tecate, located a short drive from the U.S.-Mexico border on the Baja California peninsula. CCM Tecate — which brews six beer brands, including Tecate, Dos Equis, Carta Blanca and Sol — interprets MAD/TPM to mean:

• clean, inspect, lubricate and control contamination; AND,
• the best practices of engineering and maintenance; AND,
• a focus on the tasks that add value; AND,
• design for reliability and maintainability; AND,
• continuous improvement of equipment and processes; AND,
• failure detection, problem-solving and root cause analysis; AND,
• continual development of employees’ skills, abilities and careers; AND,
• everyone is on the same page and speaks the same language; AND,
• predictive maintenance; AND,
• formal assessments to gauge program maturity and sustainability.

“It means we are all responsible for guaranteeing the total effectiveness of the equipment — maintenance, production, top management, human resources … everyone,” says plant maintenance manager Manuel Sanchez.

This is an all-consuming passion to improve reliability, productivity, safety and ecology, and the bottom line.

“MAD does not mean ‘crazy’. MAD means ‘smart’,” says Sanchez.

Comprende? You will.

MAD emerged as a CCM improvement tool several years after a series of events changed the complexion of the company. The most noteworthy event occurred in 1998 as CCM took action to restructure the contract it held with the union for maintenance and production workers. The result was new language that allowed CCM to expand the functions and responsibilities of hourly workers. This was done to shift operators away from being single-machine, single-task “autobots” and was not tied to thoughts of TPM.

As a result of these events, many veteran workers retired or left to seek employment elsewhere. The restructured workforce was quite young. For example, CCM Tecate has stabilized its turnover rate after a period of churn. Its plant population today has an average age of 33 and an average tenure of 10 years. The maintenance crew has an average age of 27 (see sidebar below).

In the aftermath of the shakeup, focus was placed on growth and achieving greater efficiencies at the breweries. In 2000, maintenance and reliability leaders at CCM headquarters in Monterrey sculpted the Japan institute’s TPM philosophy into MAD. The company’s largest brewery, in Monterrey, served as the pilot site. The initiative spread to Tecate and sites in Guadalajara, Navojoa, Toluca and Orizaba in 2001.

Each plant was wary of TPM at first, and may have settled for a suboptimized version had it not been for people like Sanchez, who served as the company’s MAD implementation coordinator during those years. Persistence and communication skills brought down the roadblocks erected by production and plant leaders.

“The top managers at plants said, ‘The operators have many new activities (stemming from the contract revisions). It’s very difficult to continue giving them more,'” says Sanchez. “We needed to convince them that these maintenance activities are part of the operation of the equipment. Care of the equipment means simpler operation. Done correctly, it makes operators’ jobs easier, it makes them more efficient and it improves key plant metrics. It was our responsibility to explain and show and describe and convince.”

Similar strategies were used to convince operators in the brewing, filling and packaging lines.

Change in job function wasn’t confined to production. MAD also turned around the structure and function of maintenance.

“Ten years ago, performance was good, but it was strictly focused on preventive maintenance,” says Sanchez. “We didn’t have maintenance engineering. Planning existed only partially. We didn’t address needs and issues before capital equipment was purchased and installed. We didn’t embrace the concept of continuous improvement. All of that has changed.”

(To be continued)

Source: Reliable Plant