A TPM Toolset for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

摘要

The management of problems and measures to solve the problems that are identified within the context of TPM and Kaizen, is a difficult task, above all for small and medium-sized businesses. The bigger the spread of the organizational structure of the business, the more difficult it is to obtain a systematic and structured overview. In particular, the time and lo'cation-related aggregation for data analysis and figures (e.g. the confidence curve depicting the relationship between cumulated completed and cumulated ongoing problem-solving measures) is not feasible without suitable IT support. The TPM toolset must be designed for application in multi-layer company hierarchies. The introduction of the TPM toolset does not have to be implemented in the entire company and all layers of hierarchy, but can be implemented step-by-step "from the bottom upwards". In this way, the company can use the TPM toolset for individual objects and areas in a plant or for all areas of the entire plant. Once the TPM toolset has proved successful in the part of the company where it was first implemented, the application can be extended to higher levels of hierarchy. The TPM can, at all times, be extended to as many subsidiaries, plants, areas and departments as required throughout the breadth of the hierarchy structure. The geographical sites where the TPM toolset server or where the application areas of the TPM toolset are located are of no importance. The extension of the TPM toolset application areas to several parts of the business provides the controllers at central locations in the business with a significant range of control over the problems, solutions to the problems and the relevant deadlines and objectives that have been set. Prioritization and escalation processes in, for example, several factories can also be monitored centrally by the controllers. The TPM toolset should be able to assign responsibility for the controlling of selected plants, areas or individual departments to specific (groups of) persons. In the TPM toolset the controlling tasks and authorization can be allocated in accordance with the company's usual relationships of subordination. This scaling concept thus ensures that the TPM toolset can be implemented both in small businesses with only one production unit and middle-sized businesses with several geographically dispersed sites. The range in hierarchy of the TPM toolset can, if required be extended at all times and grow step-by-step with the extension of the Kaizen measures in the company.