LEAN & TPM

Any manufacturing or service facility need to work hardest at the core area of control that is the shop floor, as it is usually the leading division within any organization. This shop floor comprises of the single, small or multiple processes required to manufacture a single product or churn out a service, wherein, the operational process performance is toughest and dynamically changing that need to be controlled for quality, quantity, delivery, maintenance, consistency and cost factors. Given all these factors being under control and in optimum level, the operations division can be certified as the lean process.

“Lean” is neither a state nor a performance level. Lean is actually a culture built around optimum utilization of all resources and producing optimum results. Lean ensures long-term profitability and future growth by fulfilling customer expectations in the economic way.

“Variation is the necessary EVIL.” The most common challenge of any operations division is to control the variation – be it process variation, product variation, service variation, performance variation or result variation etc. Any variation in one aspect or input of the process or division, affects all other constituents in some way- significantly, critically, normally or seldom. This affect may be immediate, frequent, periodic, intermittent or complex through the variables interlinkages of the process and system.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is the prime tool in Lean culture that is destined to take care of the variation in the infrastructure of the process or operations division. A complex facility layout disrupts flow and extends lead times. Not maintaining the machines results in variations in machine availability and performance. Quality issues arise from variations in material, workers and processes, and cause rework and defects. Hence TPM is the most appropriate culture to adopt in order to resolve and remove these short comings in the process & its constituents.

Improving processes availability, performance and quality and at the same time having products pulled through the value stream by customer demand is a good start to be more competitive in serving your customers. Gurukul implement Lean and TPM programs in challenging situations and it usually takes almost 2~5 years in a typical implementation of the Lean program and TPM philosophy. Our Catalysts are well experienced in both manufacturing as well as service sector requirements.