Beyond the Wrench: How Empowering Your People in Preventive Care Fuels True Productive Excellence

In the world of manufacturing and industrial operations, a lot of confusion still swirls around TPM. Is it “Total Preventive Maintenance” or “Total Productive Maintenance” (opens in new tab)? Are they the same thing or different?

Let’s clear the air.

Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM) is focused on scheduling checks and interventions to reduce the chance of a failure. But Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) on the other hand is focused on more than just prevention, it’s a holistic maintenance transformation. It drives toward zero breakdowns and losses by involving everyone, not just the maintenance department.

In fact, you could argue that the bridge between the two isn’t just a process difference; it’s about intersecting and connecting people.

The TPM paradox and why we still get confused

For years, many organizations have used “TPM” to refer to Total Preventive Maintenance, focusing heavily on schedules, work orders, and checklists. While preventive maintenance is an essential part of operational efficiency, it often exists in a silo and is carried out by maintenance teams alone, detached from frontline operations.

Total Productive Maintenance, on the other hand, aims to maximize the effectiveness of equipment by eliminating all forms of loss, including downtime, speed losses, and defects.

This model, which has evolved into TPM 4.0 today, is inherently cross-functional. TPM 4.0 moves away from preventive maintenance and moves more towards predictive maintenance approaches. It brings maintenance out of the shadows and into the hands of everyone who touches the equipment, especially the people who know it best: your operators.

TPM isn’t just about managing machines. It’s about empowering the humans behind them.

A brief history of TPM and Nippondenso

In order to understand TPM we need to under the concept of productive maintenance, and where it came from. Productive maintenance originated in Japan in the early 1950s, and was influenced by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who promoted the Shewhart cycle (plan-do-check-act). [1]

In 1960, Nippondenso, a Toyota Group company, implemented a plant-wide preventive maintenance program for its automated processes. Initially, maintenance was handled solely by the maintenance department, but this change required a large number of specialized personnel.

To address this need, Nippondenso trained machine operators to perform routine maintenance themselves. This approach reduced labor costs, gave operators a deeper understanding of their equipment, and allowed them to detect problems early on. Maintenance teams were then free to focus on more complex repairs and long-term reliability improvements. The enhanced communication between operators and maintenance led to fewer breakdowns, better product quality, and reduced defects.

These practices evolved into a system combining preventive maintenance and maintainable improvement, then termed productive maintenance. Toyota became the first company to fully adopt and be certified in TPM, and Nippondenso received the distinguished plant prize from the Japanese Institute of Plant Engineers (JIPE) for its development and implementation of the methodology.

Traditional Preventive Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance: How they work and connect

The flowchart contrasts Traditional Preventive Maintenance (PM) with Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), showing how each approach evolves and intersects at the operator level. On the left, Traditional PM is depicted as a top-down, schedule-driven process focused on minimizing downtime through planned interventions, often relying heavily on maintenance teams and sensor data.

On the right, TPM emphasizes a holistic, bottom-up strategy where operators play a central role in maintaining equipment, improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), and fostering teamwork. The intersection highlights how empowering operators with tools, training, and ownership bridges the gap between reactive and proactive maintenance, driving continuous improvement and operational excellence.

The human element of prevention is more than a schedule

Traditional PM programs often live in the realm of planners, schedulers, and specialized techs. And while that structure keeps critical equipment running, it can also isolate maintenance knowledge from day-to-day operations.

True “Total” Preventive Maintenance demands the involvement of everyone. That’s where Autonomous Maintenance (Jishu Hozen) comes in, it’s a core pillar of TPM that enables machine operators to take ownership of routine care like cleaning, lubrication, and basic inspections.

Operators are the front lines of failure detection. They hear strange noises before they’re detectable by sensors, feel vibrations that indicate imbalance, and spot oil leaks or misalignments while doing their daily rounds. Their involvement turns routine tasks into your most valuable early warning system. By empowering your people to engage with maintenance proactively, you’re turning preventive action into productive excellence.

From prevention to productivity: The unseen ROI

Bridging the gap between prevention and productivity isn’t a theory; it’s measurable. There are six main preventable losses in maintenance:

1. Breakdowns: Equipment failures that halt production, often caused by overlooked wear, poor lubrication, or delayed minor repairs.
2. Setup and adjustments: Time lost during changeovers or fine-tuning due to unclear procedures, poor training, or inconsistent standards.
3. Idling: Periods when machines are ready but not running, often due to poor coordination, missing materials, or unclear responsibilities.
4. Minor stoppages: Frequent short interruptions from issues like jams, misfeeds, or sensor faults that are often ignored but add up over time.
5. Quality and rework: Defects and reprocessing caused by equipment not running at optimal condition, leading to wasted time and materials.

Operator-led preventive care empowers frontline maintenance workers to take ownership of basic maintenance tasks like cleaning, inspecting, and tightening. This helps catch early signs of wear or malfunction before they become costly breakdowns. This proactive involvement builds a culture of shared responsibility and continuous improvement, aligning with the principles of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). When operators are trained and engaged in equipment care, it reduces reliance on reactive maintenance, enhances equipment reliability, and drives productivity gains.

Here’s how operator-led preventive care feeds into true Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) outcomes with examples:

There’s even more ROI to be found beyond this, for example you would see:

Reduced emergency repair costs through fewer breakdowns.

Lower production losses thanks to minimized scrap and rework.

Optimized spare parts inventory, avoiding overstock and stockouts.

Extended asset lifespan, deferring expensive capital purchases.

Lower energy consumption as machines run cleaner and more efficiently.

Building a financially intelligent TPM strategy

To make Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) stick and to secure buy-in from leadership, it needs to be tied to business goals. Here are the steps on how to build a TPM strategy with financial intelligence:

1. Align with business objectives: Maintenance should support revenue, profit margins, and delivery performance, not just uptime.
2. Make sure you are tracking the right metrics:
   • Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
   • Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
   • Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
   • Maintenance cost as % of revenue
   • Spare parts inventory turns
3. Use data to guide decision making: CMMS and EAM systems can reveal trends in equipment failure, maintenance spend, and recurring issues that training or design changes could resolve.
4. Invest in people and technology: Justify training, technology upgrades, or predictive analytics tools by linking them to clear business impacts.
5. Design for simplicity: A TPM strategy only works when it’s understood by everyone, so design processes are easy to adopt on the shop floor.

Summary: Where predictive meets productive

The future of maintenance isn’t one model versus another. It’s convergence. Total Predictive Maintenance gave us the sensors, scheduling tools, and early detection methods to reduce unplanned downtime. Total Productive Maintenance, specifically TPM 4.0, gives us the culture, structure, and cross-functional empowerment to make those tools stick and to scale performance across the whole operation.

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References

[1] Agustiady, Tina Kanti, and Elizabeth A. Cudney. Total Productive Maintenance: Strategies and Implementation Guide. Pages: 9–11. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016.