Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): Principles, pillars, and implementation

Production systems play a critical strategic role in organizations, serving as a key factor in competitiveness. What distinguishes leading companies is their ability to systematically and efficiently transform raw materials into finished products. At the core of this transformation are three essential elements: people, processes, and equipment. Managing these resources directly impacts production quality, flexibility, speed, and costs.

This is where Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) emerges, a methodology designed to build highly efficient production systems by maximizing resource utilization, eliminating losses, and ensuring long-term operational sustainability.

In this article, we explore the foundations of TPM, its origins, the pillars that support it, and the key performance indicators used to measure its impact. We also examine the primary types of losses that undermine production efficiency and how implementing TPM can transform maintenance into a genuine competitive advantage.

Foundations of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Total Productive Maintenance is a structured approach to maintenance management designed to achieve maximum efficiency across production systems. Its implementation involves every level of the organization, fostering a culture of continuous improvement focused on eliminating losses, increasing equipment reliability, and developing employee skills.

The evolution of industrial maintenance

Industrial maintenance has undergone a significant transformation over the decades, keeping pace with the growing complexity of production systems and market demands. This evolution can be divided into four major phases:

• 1st Generation (until 1950/60) – Corrective maintenance: Maintenance was entirely reactive—interventions occurred only after equipment failures. Unplanned downtime has had a significant impact on productivity and costs.
• 2nd Generation (1950/60–1970/80) – Preventive maintenance: Programmed maintenance was introduced to increase factory availability, extend equipment lifespan, and reduce costs. Maintenance became more planned, but still primarily focused on breakdown control.
• 3rd Generation (1970/80–2010) – Reliability and efficiency: Maintenance expanded to include quality, safety, ergonomics, and environmental protection, with an emphasis on lifecycle cost (LCC). TPM emerged as a structured response to the need for total reliability.
• 4th Generation (2010–present) – Maintenance 4.0: Digitalization transformed maintenance practices. Real-time data, sensors, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, digital twins, and augmented reality enabled a predictive, integrated approach with high effectiveness and reduced human intervention, integrating maintenance into the Industry 4.0 ecosystem.

What is TPM, and how did it emerge?

TPM was developed by Seiichi Nakajima in Japan between the 1950s and 1970s and later formalized by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM). Evolving from preventive maintenance, TPM integrates lean manufacturing principles and the Kaizen philosophy. Nippondenso, a Toyota supplier, was one of the first companies to implement the methodology and showcase its benefits.

What made TPM innovative was its integration of maintenance activities into daily operations, making operators responsible for the basic maintenance of their equipment and promoting cooperation between maintenance, production, and management. This approach dramatically reduced failures, improved equipment availability, and fostered a culture of continuous improvement.

The 8 pillars of TPM: Structure and purpose

The TPM implementation is built on eight foundational pillars, each with a specific role in creating a robust and sustainable production system:

1. Kobetsu Kaizen (focused improvement) – Systematic elimination of losses and inefficiencies.
2. Autonomous maintenance –Empowering operators to perform basic cleaning, maintenance, and inspections.
3. Planned maintenance – Scheduling preventive actions based on asset criticality and data analysis.
4. Training and education – Building both technical and behavioral competencies across the organization.
5. Quality maintenance – Preventing defects by controlling process variability causes.
6. Early equipment management – Integrating maintenance considerations into the design of new equipment.
7. Safety, health, and environment – Promoting a safe, clean, and sustainable work environment.
8. Administrative TPM – Extending TPM principles to support functions (administration, logistics, procurement, etc).

Figure 1 – The 8 pillars of TPM

These pillars are interdependent and must be implemented in an integrated manner to ensure the effectiveness of TPM.

The 16 major efficiency losses addressed by TPM

One of TPM's main objectives is to identify and eliminate losses that hinder production efficiency. To this end, losses are structured into 16 types, grouped into three broad categories:

1. Availability losses: These losses reduce the effective time that equipment is available for production.
2. Productivity losses refer to the waste associated with the misuse of human resources, space, and time in processes.
3. Resource losses: These directly impact the consumption of physical and energy resources.

Figure 2 – The 16 major efficiency losses addressed by TPM

A systematic approach to these 16 losses in TPM allows for the establishment of sustained improvement plans, focusing on maximizing overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and creating continuous value for the organization.

OEE – Overall Equipment Effectiveness as a core metric

Within TPM, OEE is the primary performance metric, measuring equipment efficiency through three components:

• Availability – The percentage of time equipment is ready and available for production.
• Performance – Actual operating speed compared to the ideal speed.
• Quality – The percentage of good products produced out of the total output.

The OEE calculation formula is:

OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality

Figure 3 – OEE calculation

Average OEE values can vary significantly across different industries.

TPM's core objectives

The core mission of Total Productive Maintenance is to establish a highly efficient production system that is free from losses, breakdowns, and defects, engaging all organizational levels while reducing operating costs. TPM supports this mission through four evolutionary phases in asset management:

1. Phase 1: Stabilizing failure intervals

The first step is reducing the variability of the time between failures (TBF). This involves restoring the equipment's basic conditions and eliminating hidden causes of deterioration, such as dirt, corrosion, looseness, or deformation, and preventing forced deterioration. Preventing accelerated wear is key to laying the foundation for improvement.

• Phase 2: Extending equipment lifespan

Once stabilized, the focus shifts to increasing the mean time between failures (MTBF). This phase addresses equipment weaknesses, eliminates sporadic breakdowns, and protects against harsh operating conditions. It includes actions such as improving operations, selecting the right components, and strengthening preventive maintenance.

• Phase 3: Periodic restoration of deterioration

The third phase ensures equipment remains in optimal condition through periodic time-based interventions. This includes setting inspection standards, scheduling component replacements, and installing alarm systems for early fault detection. The goal is to avoid progressive deterioration that reduces reliability.

• Phase 4: Predicting and extending life based on condition

The most advanced phase relies on condition-based diagnostics supported by real-time data, non-destructive testing, simulations, and historical analysis. This approach enables the accurate prediction of asset service life, the analysis of recurring failures, and the identification of measures to optimize equipment durability and performance from the design phase onwards.

Discover the pillars of TPM and their implementation by reading the full article.