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Due to competitive conditions today, the number of companies carrying stock or placing orders more than they need is rapidly decreasing. The concept of "working with zero stock (JIT)" implemented by Toyota in the 1970s has now been adopted or forced to be adopted by all companies. Companies must deliver the required quantity, at the required time, and at the desired quality. For this, all organs of the company, such as production, maintenance, quality, and sales, must function properly. In production, specifically, there is a need for reliable machines with low failure rates, producing accurately the first time, and operators who know their equipment and the product they produce well.
Unfortunately, many companies have not yet reached the level of delivering the desired product, at the right time, in the desired quantity, and quality. The lack of machine reliability, unexpected breakdowns, high rates of defective production, and untrained operators delay production. Overtime to meet production, extra shipping costs that need to be paid, production going to scrap, long setup times, and machine breakdowns (stoppages, spare parts, service, etc.) seriously reduce profitability. Another important problem is the dirty, disorganized, and neglected production areas. In a dirty and unorganized production area, motivation and ownership are low, and employees are not disturbed by the disorder and even problems around them. Indifference spreads, and there is no talk of discipline. Therefore, constant negative feedback comes from both customers and management, and this situation can even lead to the loss of customers.
When you closely examine the machines in such an environment, you will see dirt, oil, and water leaks, tangled and torn hoses, parts that no longer function, damaged surfaces, motors working with vibrations, molds exposed to high pressure or temperature, and machines working with low performance (loss of speed and quality). All of these are signs of serious problems...
When you talk to the manufacturer, they complain about the maintenance staff. When you talk to the maintenance staff, they tell you that they cannot keep up with the maintenance and repairs, and they complain that production workers do not use and keep the machines clean. Since the 1950s, Americans have changed their approach to maintenance activities to reduce machine-based inefficiencies and created systems like 'Preventive Maintenance,' 'Corrective Maintenance,' and 'Maintenance Prevention.' With these methods, they reduced machine-related inefficiencies to some extent, but these systems could not meet increasing expectations over time.
WHAT IS AUTONOMOUS MAINTENANCE?
In the 1970s, the Japanese modeled the 'Preventive Maintenance' (PM) approach applied by Americans to create a production management system they called TPM (Total Productive Maintenance). TPM aims to create a company culture that maximizes the efficiency of the production system.
TPM, a system focused on respect for people, involves operators or, in other words, production in maintenance activities through its Autonomous Maintenance (Jishu-Hozen) feature.
The meaning of the word autonomous can be explained with expressions like "self-sufficient, able to do without depending on others."
ROLE OF EMPLOYEES
The goal is to train conscious, well-educated, and highly motivated operators to support the continuous and minimal-loss production of machines or assembly lines. Employees actively involved in autonomous maintenance activities should possess most of the following characteristics to create a positive impact on improvement efforts:
These definitions actually describe the ideal operator that every production manager wants in their team. The autonomous maintenance method will be a good guide for reaching this ideal.
AUTONOMOUS MAINTENANCE STAGES
Autonomous maintenance aims to improve equipment and operator performance in 7 steps:
Before starting the cleaning and inspection activities, a list of unsafe activities that could cause work accidents should be prepared, and countermeasures should be taken, with training provided.
Cleaning is an important step that allows abnormalities to be noticed, instilling the understanding that "Cleaning is control." Cleaning is not just about cleaning the equipment. By touching and cleaning the equipment manually, "minor defects/abnormalities" are detected. Before starting autonomous maintenance activities, it is important for operators to understand what equipment cleaning is.
The Meaning of Cleaning Equipment cleaning is defined as thoroughly cleaning dirt, paint, dust, oil stains, small parts, and mud stuck to equipment, molds, jigs, and tools. Hidden defects in the equipment become apparent after cleaning. The phrase "Cleaning is control" is used for this reason. During cleaning activities, abnormalities found are flagged with a defect tag (F-Tag).
Important Points About Cleaning
This step involves kaizen activities to eliminate contamination and scattering sources and make hard-to-reach areas more accessible, thereby reducing the time allocated for cleaning and inspection activities. In this step, operators start generating kaizen ideas and taking part in kaizen activities. This increases operators' motivation and fosters team spirit. The kaizens made help operators become experts on their equipment, increasing their sense of ownership and self-confidence.
Eliminating Contamination and Scattering Kaizen activities are carried out to eliminate the contamination and scattering sources identified in the first step, or if they cannot be eliminated, to minimize them. Eliminating contamination and scattering sources reduces the time spent on non-value-added daily cleaning activities and increases the operator's motivation. Continuously cleaning the same contamination every day eventually demotivates the operator, and over time, they lose the desire to clean. The same applies to lengthy inspection activities.
Facilitating Access to Hard-to-Reach Areas Kaizen activities are conducted to facilitate access to hard-to-reach areas to make cleaning and inspection activities easier and reduce the time allocated for these activities. • Widespread use of visual inspection methods that reduce inspection times, • Widespread use of elements that facilitate assembly/disassembly operations, • Use of cleaning tools that make it easier to clean hard-to-reach areas, etc.
In this step, operators receive lubrication training on lubrication points, oil level checks, and how to perform oil refills on their equipment. By the end of this step, the operator begins performing periodic oil checks and lubrication. Based on the experience gained in the first two steps, a temporary autonomous maintenance standard is established to maintain equipment conditions and detect abnormalities before a breakdown occurs. This standard is continuously revised and elevated to higher levels with new experiences gained. One key point is that the operators have now understood and accepted the necessity of this standard. During this process, operators should continue to receive training to raise their awareness about their equipment. Kaizen activities continue to shorten cleaning and inspection times. By the end of this step, you will have a clean equipment park where deterioration has been halted.
The first three steps focused on preventing deterioration and creating and improving temporary autonomous maintenance standards. In the fourth step, while dealing with measurable deterioration and deterioration repair, the goal is to develop the operator and make them a real expert on the equipment. The operator's understanding of the function and structure of their equipment, gaining the necessary knowledge and skills to operate the equipment, and increasing autonomous maintenance capabilities through the PUKÖ (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle are targeted.
To become experts on the equipment they use, operators must learn common fundamental topics related to each part of the equipment. The following training is provided within this scope: Fasteners
These trainings improve their ability to detect abnormalities. After each training, "General Inspections" are conducted together with the trainer. Some inspection and repair tasks are delegated to operators.
To ensure the continuity of the success achieved in the first four steps and to increase its efficiency, the temporary autonomous maintenance standard is reviewed in detail in terms of:
In this step, the management mechanism is established by determining the conditions for autonomous maintenance management. Also, the operator's role in tasks related to areas connected to the equipment is expanded. Kaizen activities are conducted to facilitate work and eliminate losses by focusing on the operator's movements. The following standards are established for the operator's tasks:
All operators in the field are expected to perform at least as well as the average operator. Once all operators can perform at the level of an average operator and all losses have been reduced, we can talk about autonomous management.
The goal of this step is to establish a management system that will not fail in the future to maintain the level achieved in the first 6 steps and ensure its continuity. At this point, equipment has reached its initial performance levels, and production is carried out without losses with operators who have adopted the "Zero accident, zero breakdown, zero defect, and zero downtime" philosophy. Thanks to the feedback and suggestions from the operators, the success rate of new equipment and new product development activities has increased, while labor and quality-related costs have been reduced.
Maintenance personnel will now have time to focus on their development, becoming a more competent maintenance department that focuses on improvement and development efforts to increase machine performance, emphasizes automation projects, and works to reduce maintenance and spare parts costs. Production managers will have more time to focus on increasing engineering activities such as reducing costs, improving quality, and researching new production techniques and technologies. A clean and organized production area and machine park will be achieved, one that employees, especially operators, can take pride in and one that enhances motivation for all employees.