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1. Introduction
Manufacturers have realized the need to continuously improve their operations to compete successfully. In an effort to increase organizational capabilities, companies have made investments in programs, such as just-in-time and total quality management. However, benefits from these programs have often been limited because of unreliable or inflexible equipment (Garwood, 1990). Therefore, many companies, including Procter and Gamble, Dupont, Ford and Eastman Chemical, have looked toward total productive maintenance (TPM) to augment their JIT and TQM programs in a drive for continual improvement. TPM addresses equipment maintenance through a comprehensive productive-maintenance delivery system covering the entire life of the equipment and involving all employees from production and maintenance personnel to top management (Tajiri and Gotoh, 1992). TPM, a resource-emphasized approach, moves the paradigm of maintenance by putting emphasis on total employee involvement in the maintenance activities. Operators and all employees should be actively involved in a maintenance program that enables disruptions, breakdowns, stoppages, failures and so forth to be avoided in order to improve manufacturing performance. Therefore, in the highly competitive manufacturing industries, the ability and reliability of equipment that is well maintained is very important in order to achieve desired manufacturing performance, namely, cost reduction, high quality products, on-time delivery and flexibility (Seth and Tripathi, 2005). TPM is the combination of the following three words:
total implies a comprehensive look at all activities that relate to the maintenance of equipment and the impact each has upon availability;
productive relates to the end goal of the effort, i.e. efficient production not merely efficient maintenance as is often mistakenly assumed; and
maintenance signifies the directional thrust of the program in ensuring reliable processes and maintaining production.
The main idea behind the maintenance is to make the parts and machine ready to do what are required within the time and sizes allocated and do it with fewer amounts of resources. To control the budget in organizations, downsizing is mostly adopted which reduces the availability of personnel for unscheduled work. Furthermore next to the energy costs, maintenance costs can be the largest part of any operational budget. So timely maintenance actions are required which will minimize the incidence of such failures, and increases the reliability of machines and equipment through the effective management of maintenance function (Sharma