English Version / TPM Concepts and Literature Review / Concept / MP Design

Maintenance Prevention Pillar (MP)

Maintenance Prevention refers to “design activities carried out during the planning and construction of new equipment, that impart to the equipment high degrees of reliability, maintainability, economy, operability, safety, and flexibility, while considering maintenance information and new technologies, and to thereby reduce maintenance expenses and deterioration losses.” (Shirose 1996 p. 355) Maintenance Prevention is also known as Early Management (Suzuki 1994), Initial Phase Management (Shirose 1996), and Initial Flow Control (Nakajima 1984). The classic objective of MP is to minimize the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) of equipment. “InTPM, the concept of MP design is expanded to include design that aims at achieving not only no breakdowns (reliability) and easy maintenance (maintainability) but also prevention of all possible losses that may hamper production system effectiveness and pursuit of ultimate system improvement. To be specific, MP design should be so done as to satisfy reliability, maintainability, ‘Jishu-Hozen’, operability, resource saving, safety, and flexibility.” (Japan_Institute_of_Plant_Maintenance 1996 p. 103) Expanding the concept of Total Production Manufacturing, Maintenance Prevention applies to the design of equipment layout and facilitization as well as new processesand products (design for manufacturability).

Leachman identified time-to-market as a critical factor in the life-cycle profitability of new products/processes in the semiconductor industry. (Leachman, Plummer et al. 1999) Effective Maintenance Prevention supports reduction of the vertical startup lead-time by improving the initial reliability and reducing variability of equipment and processes. In large part, MP improvements are based on learning from the existing equipment and processes within the Focused Improvement, Autonomous Maintenance, and Planned Maintenance TPM pillar activities. “MPdesign activity minimizes future maintenance costs and deterioration losses of new equipment by taking into account (during planning and construction) maintenance data on current equipment and new technology and by designing for high reliability, maintainability, economy, operability, and safety. Ideally, MP-designed equipment must not break down or produce nonconforming products…The MP design process improves equipment [and process] reliability by investigating weaknesses in existing equipment [and processes] and feeding the information back to the designers.”(Suzuki 1994 p. 201) For example, Agilent Technologies has maintenance technicians and engineers work directly with equipment manufacturers to share current equipment performance information to improve the design of new equipment.(Leflar 2003) One of the goals of MP design is to break free of equipment-centered design mentality by adopting a human-machine* system approach. (Suzuki 1994) Inaddition to equipment/process reliability and performance attributes, the systems approach will also look at the man-machine interface as it relates to operability and maintainability and safety.

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

* See Pomorski, T. (2002). Applying Sociotechnical Systems (STS) Theory to AdvancedManufacturing Operations. Cincinnati, OH, Union Institute and University. for discussion of humanmachineand sociotechnical systems concepts.