Problems and Barriers Affecting Total Productive Maintenance Implementation

Total productive maintenance (TPM) is at the forefront of the maintenance strategies which brought about a paradigm shift from repair-maintenance strategy to proactive maintenance. The philosophy of TPM entails the facets of cost reduction and increased productivity. However, it has been observed that many manufacturing enterprises have made unsuccessful attempts at its adoption. In order to detect and overcome a qualitative research methodology has been employed and a survey has been carried out identifying the barriers and categorizing them to strategic, managerial, departmental, financial, and social regimes through rigorous data analysis. It was observed that strategic constraints are primarily detrimental to the success of TPM due to the lack of defined strategies for workers by management. Moreover, the departmental constraints are present due to misalignment between TPM and departmental objectives, in addition to the lack of training for workers in the system for TPM implementation. Moreover, there are managerial and financial constraints due to the lack of information visibility and finances, social constraints due to gap between top management authorization and worker mentality. Finally, a proper strategy has been proposed to address the issues affecting TPM implementation.