Analysis of total productive maintenance methods at viva steel products.
Abstract
In Uganda, small and medium manufacturing industries account for 80 percent of manufactured output, 75 percent of GDP, 90 percent of enterprises. They face challenges of low capacity, low quality and low efficiency. There is also a 25.8% inability to deliver existing orders, and yet the rapidly changing global marketplace calls for effecting improvements in a company’s performance by focusing on cost reduction, increasing productivity levels, quality and guaranteeing deliveries in order to satisfy customers. The SME production factories also face challenges of low-quality products, low production capacity and low efficiency of the productive systems. These challenges are caused by unqualified, inexperienced and undertrained personnel, unreliable equipment in the value chain due to break downs, raw materials used, production environment and methods used for production. However, these challenges have been greatly reduced in large scale production factories by implementation of TPM.
The research, implementation and success of TPM has mainly been carried out in large scale production factories. No literature was available regarding implementation and effectiveness of TPM in small-medium scale production factories and its effect on their quality, productivity and performance.
Therefore, there was need to carry out research evaluating the TPM methods employed in small-medium scale production factories and their effectiveness. My research aimed at addressing the knowledge gap of implementation of Total Productive Maintenance, its effectiveness and effect on quality, production cost, capacity and performance in small-medium production factories. This research addressed this knowledge gap by analyzing Total Productive Maintenance methods in a small-medium production factory.
To achieve the research objectives, I did a preliminary Study which involved desk research in the library and internet and field visits to various industries and industrial areas, I did an industry sample in which I applied to various industries and was accepted at Viva steel products, I did data collection using surveys and observation, did data verification, data analysis and calculated the availability, reliability and mean time between failures, mean time to repair, process rate or performance, quality rate, Overall equipment effectiveness, equipment utilization and Productive capacity of the equipment.
Only planned maintenance was practiced at the factory, the average availability was 72.8%, average performance was 58.12%, average quality rate was 99.99%, the average OEE was 45.36%, reliability and mean time between failures was 389 minutes, mean time to repair was 157.41379 minutes, the equipment utilization 91.6% and the Production capacity was 41.5%.
There is a lack of awareness about TPM and most of its pillars in SME factories and low Overall equipment effectiveness is experience mainly due to low availability and performance which are as a result of understaffing of the maintenance department, unreliable power supply and use of old equipment. However, these failures can be eradicated by using the Total Productive maintenance equipment management system which embodies effective maintenance strategies.