Subject Overview

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is an enterprise-wide approach to maximizing equipment effectiveness through loss elimination, preventive and predictive maintenance, employee ownership, quality management and continuous improvement. The subject integrates traditional TPM pillars with reliability engineering, lifecycle economics, digital technologies, analytics, AI, governance and sustainable operations.

Learning Goal

Enable postgraduate learners to design, implement, evaluate and strategically lead TPM systems that improve asset reliability, productivity, quality, safety and lifecycle value through evidence-based managerial decisions and contemporary digital practices.

Syllabus

1. Foundations and Evolution of Total Productive Maintenance

Learning Objective: Explain TPM terminology, objectives, history and evolution from breakdown maintenance to preventive, productive and reliability-centered approaches; distinguish TPM from TQM, Lean, Six Sigma and conventional maintenance.

Category: foundation

2. Equipment Losses, OEE and Performance Measurement

Learning Objective: Analyze the Six Big Losses and calculate availability, performance, quality, OEE, TEEP, MTBF, MTTR and related indicators; address data definitions, hidden losses, benchmarking and metric misuse.

Category: core

3. TPM Architecture, Pillars and Deployment Framework

Learning Objective: Examine the eight TPM pillars, organizational roles, maturity stages and phased deployment process, including readiness assessment, policy setting, master planning, pilot selection, audits and enterprise rollout.

Category: core

4. Autonomous Maintenance

Learning Objective: Apply the seven-step autonomous maintenance process involving initial cleaning, contamination control, standards, inspection, operator ownership, visual management, 5S and abnormality detection.

Category: application

5. Planned Maintenance Management

Learning Objective: Design preventive, corrective, shutdown and opportunity-maintenance programs using asset criticality, failure history, job planning, scheduling, work orders, backlog control, maintenance standards and compliance management.

Category: core

6. Reliability Engineering and Maintenance Strategy Selection

Learning Objective: Use failure modes, bathtub curves, Weibull concepts, FMEA/FMECA, fault-tree analysis, reliability block diagrams, RCM and risk-based maintenance to select technically and economically appropriate policies.

Category: advanced

7. Focused Improvement and Chronic Loss Elimination

Learning Objective: Lead cross-functional kaizen using Pareto analysis, root-cause analysis, 5 Whys, Ishikawa diagrams, PM analysis, ECRS, SMED, mistake-proofing and structured problem-solving to eliminate chronic and sporadic losses.

Category: application

8. Quality Maintenance and Zero-Defect Operations

Learning Objective: Connect equipment conditions with process capability and defects; apply quality maintenance matrices, condition control, SPC, defect prevention, traceability and Poka-Yoke to pursue zero defects and zero rework.

Category: core

9. Early Equipment Management and Lifecycle Design

Learning Objective: Integrate maintainability, reliability, operability, ergonomics and lifecycle learning into equipment specification, procurement, installation, commissioning and design; apply RAMS, lifecycle costing and design-for-maintenance principles.

Category: strategic

10. Maintenance Organization, Skills and TPM Culture

Learning Objective: Develop governance structures, competency matrices, multi-skilling, training systems, leadership routines, operator–maintenance collaboration, change management and employee engagement required for sustainable TPM.

Category: strategic

11. Safety, Health, Environment and Ethical Governance

Learning Objective: Embed zero-accident and environmentally responsible maintenance through hazard analysis, permit-to-work, lockout/tagout, statutory compliance, human factors, contractor control, energy efficiency, ethical reporting and accountability.

Category: strategic

12. Spare Parts, Support Functions and Asset Supply Networks

Learning Objective: Optimize spare-parts classification, inventory levels, obsolescence, repair-versus-replace decisions, vendor performance and maintenance logistics; extend TPM principles to offices, utilities, warehouses and supply partners.

Category: application

13. Maintenance Economics, Analytics and Managerial Decisions

Learning Objective: Evaluate downtime cost, maintenance budgets, cost–risk–performance trade-offs, replacement timing, capital investment, outsourcing and improvement portfolios using lifecycle cost, NPV, ROI, sensitivity and decision analysis.

Category: advanced

14. Digital TPM, Condition Monitoring and AI

Learning Objective: Assess CMMS/EAM, IoT sensors, machine data, digital twins, mobile systems and condition-monitoring techniques; apply predictive analytics and AI for anomaly detection and remaining-useful-life estimation while governing data quality, cybersecurity, explainability and human oversight.

Category: contemporary

15. TPM Strategy, Assessment and Future-Ready Implementation

Learning Objective: Formulate an integrated TPM roadmap aligned with operations strategy, Lean systems, Industry 4.0 and sustainability; use audits, maturity models, balanced scorecards and case analysis to manage scaling, resilience and emerging human–machine maintenance practices.

Category: contemporary