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Safety and Environmental Pillar

Although shown as the last pillar of TPM (Figure 3), the TPM Safety and Environmental pillar is equally, if not more, important than the seven others. Shirose describes safety as “the maintenance of peace of mind”. (Shirose 1996 p. 500) No TPM program is meaningful without strict focus on safety and environmental concerns. “Ensuring equipment reliability, preventing human error, and eliminating accidents and pollution are the key tenets of TPM.” (Suzuki 1994 p. 323) Suzuki provides examples of how TPM improves safety and environmental protection.

Faulty or unreliable equipment is a source of danger to the operator and the environment. The TPM objective of Zero-failure and Zero-defects directly supports Zero-accidents.
Autonomous Maintenance teaches equipment operators how to properly operate equipment and maintain a clean and organized workstation. 5-Sactivity eliminates unsafe conditions in the work area.
TPM-trained operators have a better understanding of their equipment and processes and are able to quickly detect and resolve abnormalities that might result in unsafe conditions.
Operation of equipment by unqualified operators is eliminated through effective deployment of TPM.
Operators accept responsibility for safety and environmental protection attheir workstations.
Safety and environmental protection standards are proliferated and enforces as part of the TPM Quality Maintenance pillar.

Implementing the TPM Safety and Environmental pillar focuses on identifying and eliminating safety and environmental incidents. According to the Heinrich Principle, (Heinrich 1980), for every 500,000 safety incidents there are 300‘near misses’, 29 injuries, and 1 death, see Figure 26. Investigating industrial accidents, Heinrich found that 88% of accidents where caused by unsafe acts ofpeople, 10% where the result of unsafe physical conditions, and 2% he considered‘acts of God’.

Figure 26 - The Heinrich Principle

TPM uses Why-Why Analysis* to probe for the root causes (incidents in the Heinrich model) that result in safety or environmental near misses. Suzuki describes six phases that an operation passes through during an industrial accident. (Suzuki1994)

Phase 1 – Normal operation, stable state.
Phase 2 – Signs of abnormality, the system becomes more and moredisordered.
Phase 3 – Unsteady state, difficult to restore to normal.
Phase 4 – Obvious danger as a result of failure or abnormality. Damage and injury can still be contained and minimized.
Phase 5 – Injury and severe damage occur.
Phase 6 – Recovery after the situation is under control.

TPM practices, such as those listed below, allow quick operator intervention and prevent incidents from approaching Phase 3.

1. Monitor equipment and processes and quickly correct abnormalities.
2. Install and check safety equipment.
3. Identify and eliminate hidden equipment abnormalities and defects.

Environmental safety is becoming an increasing point of focus for TPM implementation. “Manufacturing management in the 21st century will not be effectiveif the environmental issues are ignored. Manufacturing management that does not take environmental issues into consideration will be removed from society. One of the causes of environmental issues is that industries, academic institutions, and government agencies have been specialized in research, development, promotion, and diffusion of design technologies to produce more artificial products. There is very little concern about setting conditions for equipment to the most favorable ones after it is put into operation or diagnostic techniques to maintain those conditions.” (Ichikawa 1999 p. 9) Environmental safety goes beyond simply eliminating accidents. In today’s manufacturing environment, environmental safety includes reduction of energy consumption, elimination of toxic waste, and reduction of raw material consumption. Funahashi describes a case study that uses TPM activity to reduce energy consumption in manufacturing. (Funahashi 1998)

Ichikawa proposes that TPM address the following key environmental objectives within the Safety and Environmental pillar. (Ichikawa 1999)

1. Construct an Environmental Management System (EMS) that integrates environmental issues as a system. This objective is consistent with ISO 14001/14004.
2. Implement activities, through the TPM program, to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing operations.
3. Create systems to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing product and process development.
4. Enhance the environmental awareness and education of all employees.

Ichikawa emphasizes that the Environmental Management System “is part and parcel of the work and this implementation should be done through TPM. In concreteterms, this consists of environmental education, products and equipment development that implement improvements for environmental aspects reduction and give consideration to environmental load, and it is considered to be appropriate to develop these themes along the conventional TPM pillars.” (Ichikawa 1999 p. 13)

[Original: Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Concepts and Literature Review by Thomas R. Pomorski, Principal Consulting Engineer, Brooks Automation, Inc.]

* Why-Why Analysis is also known as 5-Why Analysis. It is a brainstorming root cause analysis (RCA) process that looks at a problem and searches for causes by asking ‘Why?’. The simple flow ofthe process is illustrated below. 1. Identify the problem. 2. List the possible causes of the problem (the first level of Why). 3. Continue to as Why for each cause until there are no more suggestions. 4. Identify solutions for the lowest level of Why’s (the root causes). Typically, 5 levels of Why will lead the brainstorming team the root cause of a problem. For a moredetailed explanation of Why-Why Root Cause Analysis see Asaka, T. and K. Ozeki (1990). Handbook of Quality Tools, The Japanese Approach. Cambridge, MA, Productivity Press.. “Such exploration ofreal causes should lead to improved methods to prevent recurrence. ”Japan_Institute_of_Plant_Maintenance, Ed. (1996). TPM Total Productive Maintenance Encyclopedia.Tokyo, Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance.