GA 313 | The Eight Pillars of Total Productive Maintenance with Balaji Chandrasekar

Progress is not inevitable. You know, change is not always a precursor for progress. It's actually driven by the choices we make. So if you make the right choice, you know, if you build the right capability and right engagement in the shop floor and, you know, across the different levels of management, then progress happens. But it's not an automatic change. Progress is not always, you know, happening. If you just do a CI implementation, you have to make the right choices.

Today I'm excited to welcome Balaji Chandrasekhar to the show. Now, Balaji and I first communicated over LinkedIn and came to find out that Balaji has a pretty extensive experience with TPM, or Total Productive Maintenance. And so I asked him if he would be willing to come onto the show to tell us a little bit about his TPM journey. And he graciously accepted. And Balaji, as you'll hear, is from Australia, so he has a really, really cool accent, which is always fun to hear, but, boy, he sure knows his tpm. And so today on the show, we talk a little bit about what TPM is, what total productive maintenance is, and how it can benefit many organizations, in particular those organizations with really important flow. So you'll see TPM practiced a lot within the food industry and beverages and so forth. And so what we did was we just kind of walked through TPM and then we actually went through there's eight pillars of tpm. And so we just touched on each of the eight pillars and Balaji gave us a little rundown on what they mean for him. We then spent some time talking about oee, or overall equipment effectiveness, which is one of the traditional metrics, at least in the west, for companies who are practicing tpm. And yeah, it was really fun to hear his, his take. And he's also full of wisdom, as you heard in that kind of opening snippet, Pretty philosophical guy and just, just really interesting, really interesting conversation. So we actually talked about a lot of books and links and whatnot. And so those show notes are going to be really important for today. So that's GembaPodcast.com and you'll look for episode 313313. Again, GembaPodcast.com, look for episode three. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the show here with, with Balaji, when we get started. Gemba Academy is actually working on a pretty extensive TPM series of videos, and that'll be coming later in the year. So this was actually perfect timing and really, really fun to chat. So again, GembaPodcast.com look for episode 313 enough from me. Let's get to the show. Balaji, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm very well, Ron. Thanks for having me on. It's so exciting to be on.

Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, it's exciting to have you on. So where are you calling in from today?

I'm calling in from Melbourne, Australia. So it's one of the second tier cities in Australia, so I'm calling in from Melbourne.

Nice, nice. And I understand pretty early in the morning for you right there, right?

It is, yeah. It's six in the morning. Yeah. So it's nice and early for me here.

Okay, well, yeah, thanks for your flexibility there and appreciate you carving out some time. So.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Yeah. So, Balaji, you know, we like to kind of begin our shows with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one that you want to share?

I do have a quote, Ron, and if you don't mind, it's a couple of lines from a poem called the Psalm of Life by H.W. longfellow, if that's okay. Yeah, yeah. It's called under the way it goes is lives of great men, all reminders to make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us footprints on the sands of time. So it talks about the greatness of people and the greatness that they've achieved before us and how it should inspire us to achieve or at least even strive for greatness in our own lives while we have the time here.

I like it. Very good, very good. All right, well, Balaji, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, tell us how you got introduced to all this continuous improvement stuff, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Sure, sure. So, Ron, I did my undergrad engineering in India in instrumentation, and then I came over to Australia to do my master's in industrial engineering. And that kind of, you know, led me into the CI space. So after I finished my graduate, after I finished my master's, I graduated and I went into cement industry, making cement for a large cement manufacturer. And then I moved into the food and beverage industry, where I've been for the last 12 to 14 years now. So I've been in the production management CI space, mostly in TPM capacity for the last 12, 14 years now.

Nice, nice. So TPM. So I was mentioning before we started recording that this is really interesting timing for us to be talking about tpm, because Gemba Academy is preparing to create a pretty comprehensive series of videos on tpm. So really, really great timing. And excited. We'll probably have some more folks on over the coming weeks and months to maybe explore different aspects of tpm. But maybe let's just begin Balaji with I don't want, I never want to assume anything with, with our listeners and I know we have all different types of folks out there with different experiences and so, so maybe let's just begin with, with what is tpm? Total productive maintenance, like at a high level. How would you explain it to someone who, who might not be familiar with, with the concept? What would you say? What is tpm?

Yeah, so tpm, simply put, Ron, is, is about achieving maximum equipment effectiveness. So which is about o overall equipment effectiveness while you simultaneously build shop floor capability and employee engagement, simply put, as a combination of plant performance and your shop floor capability or your people engagement.

Now, in your particular company, feel free to share as much or as little as you, as you want to or you know, even the name of the company. If you want to, you can, but you don't have to tell us a little bit about your business and then how TPM is playing an important role and what you guys are trying to achieve as a business.

Right? So tpm. The way we implement tpm, Ron, is we help. So I work for a packaging company and we help our customers implement tpm. And what we basically do is we sell them packaging material and also we sell them consultancy services based on any technical issues, operational issues they might have with the assets that they have. So we, we share our expertise and we tell them how to implement TPM and how to improve operational capability on the shop floor as well.

Okay, so talk a little bit about, so we high level talked about what TPM is, but maybe talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you're seeing folks face when they're, when they're implementing, when they're first implementing tpm.

So sure. You know Ron, when I was a young engineer starting out in the world of tpm, I thought if something made sense logically, it would make sense logically, it would make sense for other people as well and it could be easily adopted. I think I'm a bit more wiser now and I think, you know, I realized very quickly that change is often hard on people, even for those leading it, and especially harder on those who have been impacted by it. So TPM is no different. TPM is quite a significant change in the way a business operates. And TPM is something that people think that TPM is something that they have to do over and about their jobs, but it's not usually the case. And tpm, like any big significant business change, has its challenges. It's not intuitive. Something like 5s can be intuitive, but TPM is not quite intuitive. It takes a coach to actually take you through the steps of TPM and to do it right and again has significant lead times. And if you don't have the right support structure behind it from the management, it can quite quickly fizzle out as well. So it's quite important that you have the right support structure behind it. Having skilled people kind of leading the implementation, so people know what the next steps are and how to actually get there. And if you have key influences in the business not believing in the process, that can be a significant challenge as well.

Yeah, so there's. I know I'm preaching to the choir here. I'm going to maybe make it a little educational. So there's eight pillars of TPM as we talk about when we're teaching it, you know, things like autonomous maintenance, focused improvement plan maintenance, quality management, so forth. What is your experience with the eight pillars of tpm? Do you. Do you suggest starting with one of them? I mean, obviously you have to start somewhere. So, like, how do you, how do you approach the eight pillars of tpm?

Right. The way we approach it is. That's a great question, to be honest, Ron. The way we approach it is we usually start with the foundation pillars, what we call the foundation pillars, which is your focused improvement, autonomous maintenance plan maintenance and education and training. And then, and then you focus on one which has the biggest impact for the business. Obviously you have to understand what true north is for the business. So why are they implementing TPM in the first place? And it could be cost cutting, it could be, you know, top skill, the shop floor. And you obviously focus on the pillar that drives that metric, basically. And then once that's in place and once the, the foundations are in place, then you can go with the other four pillars. So you start off with the first foundation pillars and then you go on to the other four. Sometimes even people start up with one pillar. For instance, you know, if you think there's a lot of waste in the business, then you can start off with the focused improvement and you do a lot of Kaizen activity to actually, you know, stabilize the business and bring it back to a standard. And then you can start implementing autonomous maintenance and planned maintenance after that.

Yeah, so, you know, you were talking about the challenges and, you know, as far as change and I mean, really, whether it's TPM or lean. Right. Or something. Like that. I mean, it could be hard. Right. Changes is difficult. Would you say that in your experience that tpm, the components, these eight pillars of TPM present any unique challenges that are unique to something like tpm. That's not. Just has to do with this change in general. Have you. What do you think about that?

Yeah, so TPM is fairly unique, but it's not. It's. I think the way TPM is structured, it's not cyclical like Lean can be. They have a lot of Kaizen activity happening with Lean. There's small incremental improvements, but TPM is more linear. It starts off at a certain point and finishes off at a certain point. So it's quite linear. And people. If you don't have a roadmap in front of you, it can be quite challenging. So I think that's one thing that's quite different from Lean. And I think TPM is also the precursor for Lean. If you ask me, if you don't have the asset reliability and if you don't have the people capability early on, then I guess something like Lean would struggle with later on. So I think if you have the foundations in place just in time, and Lean can easily be added on. On top of it.

Yeah. Now, would you guys say that you practice just traditional Lean, you know, running around doing Kaizen events, or, you know, practicing, you know, different Lean tools, value stream mapping and so forth, or would you say you don't? I'm just curious.

We do, we do, but not as much as the TPM tools. The TPM tools are very similar. So you have the Kaizen activity and we follow the DMAIC structure or the DMEIC structure for problem solving. And we also have the Kaizen activity, which is more like a go see where you go on the shop floor and actually start looking at what opportunities exist and how do you actually tackle them in a small but sustainable way so people can actually take them on board and actually run with them. So I think it's the Lean tools are. I mean, the tools are the tools. It's a problem that's. That's more pertinent and how you actually apply the tools for the problem.

Yeah, well, it's interesting, I know in different companies, you know, TPM is critical, you know, like food manufacturing or something like that. The machine breaks, the whole business stops. Right.

And Absolutely, absolutely. It's quite expensive as well.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. It is funny. It's like some Lean people. Well, TPM is part of Lean or is Lean part of tpm. Right. So it's a philosophy.

Exactly. The philosophies, I think it's all about building engagement and building capability whilst you improve your plan performance. It's all about meeting market demand. That's pretty much the end result that everyone's aspiring for.

Yeah, for sure. We teased about the eight pillars. Maybe we should run through them just at a high level, just in case folks aren't familiar. I don't know if there's a correct order or not, but the order that.

I don't think there is.

Yeah, like the order that I've. I don't know, for whatever reason, is autonomous maintenance I've always talked about first. What is autonomous maintenance? Just elevator pitch maybe for each one of these.

Sure. So autonomous maintenance is about, you know, restoring the machine back to basic condition. So it's about how do you bring it back to a standard condition where it basically performs at what it's meant to be. Basically performs at how it meant to perform at.

Yeah. And giving people autonomy. Right. To do maintenance.

Right.

On a regular basis.

Correct, correct. And it's all about folk and. Sorry, this is focused on the. The operator or the other person running the equipment. Yeah, it's about. And one of the key roles for an operator, Ron, if you ask me, is to respond to deviation. And autonomous maintenance actually teaches them how to respond to any deviation in the process if the machine's in operating condition on standard condition.

Okay. Focused improvement number two. What is that? You mentioned it already a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So focused improvement is about running Kaizen activity. So it could be as small as doing a go see or it could be as big as running a Six Sigma project. And it's about having a specific outcome that you're looking for for the business and then actually forming a small cross functional team and then going after it. So it's about creating the space for autonomous maintenance and planned maintenance, where you can create space and you can create that opening for turnless maintenance and planned maintenance to actually come in.

Okay. And planned maintenance you just hinted at.

Yeah, planned maintenance is obviously like it says, maintenance. It's about having the reliability from a maintenance perspective on the machine. So it's about having the right structures in the in PMs, you know, having preventative maintenance happening. So if there are any issues that are raised with the machine while you're tagging and restoring the machine back to basic condition, planned maintenance can come in and actually assist the operators and the technician to restore it back to basic condition again.

Okay. Another pillar is quality Management. So what is quality managed from a TPM perspective as compared to say, you know, defect reduction in an assembly line?

Sure. The quality management is about quality assurance. So it's about having quality at the source and not passing quality down the line. So it's identifying which part of the process actually creates the defect and then fixing the process so the defect doesn't happen in the first place. And again it goes back to the principles of autonomous maintenance. So restoring the machine back to basic condition and understanding the machine well enough so you understand where the quality defects are coming from and then how do you actually stop it from happening in the first place?

This next one I've heard kind of described a few different ways, but something like early equipment management, Is that what you would say?

Yes. Management is about vertical startups for any new asset that you normally put in. So if you have a new capital expense for the business and you, you're buying a new machine or new plant or whatever, it's about how quickly can you have a vertical startup after the lines gone live basically. And it's about having the right principles of project management in place and you build the foundations of TPM before the line basically goes live. So it's how do you actually make it easy to clean, easy to lubricate, easy to inspect, easy to operate and having those principles thought of and implemented beforehand before the machine goes into operation?

Yeah, education and training, maybe self explanatory.

I guess maybe it is, it is and I think it's one of the key pillars of TPM because it talks about building capability across all levels of the business, starting with management all the way down to the shop floor. So it's about how do you educate yourself and how do you upskill yourself in the process of tpm.

Now there's somebody that right now listening, if they've listened this far, good on you. If you're working, maybe an office or you don't have big machines running in your as part of your daily work, but there is a pillar for administrative and office tpm. So talk a little bit about that.

Sure, sure. So office, office pillar is probably the last one of the last pillars that actually gets on. Not for any reason I guess in particular, but it's just one of those, it's just one of those quirks of tpm. Office is about administrative losses and how do you actually improve your administrative processes in the business. So if you have any losses stemming from, from the administration part of the business like auto taking or delivery, then this is obviously, this is one of the pillars that actually looks into that. And it also talks about efficiency and effectiveness in the office environment.

And then last but definitely not least, safety, health and environmental conditions.

Yep. So one of the key pillars that goes hand in hand with any other pillar is about how do you improve the workplace health and safety. So ensuring that when you do something, it's not hurting anyone, it's not hurting the machine, it's not hurting the plant, or it's not hurting the person operating it. And most importantly, in the food and beverage industry, it's not hurting the consumer either. So it's about how do you ensure that safety and quality is built into every. Sorry. Safety and health is built into every part of the process that you're looking at.

Yeah, yeah. Now you mentioned earlier oee, at least in the west, it seems to be one of the key metrics for TPM engagement. Talk a little bit about OEE and the three factors that go into formalizing that metric.

Sure. So OE stands for overall equipment effectiveness. And it's got three components that go into it and the first one is availability. So it's quite self explanatory. If the machines, let's say the machines plan to run for a certain number of hours, does it run for those number of hours? It's basically saying how much is the machine available to actually produce something? And then you have. The next one is productivity. It talks about how well does the plant run or how well does the machine run while it's in production. So it talks about breakdowns, your small stops, your speed losses, any other losses that stem from while the machine is in the production phase. And last, you have the quality, which is about quality defects and quality rejects and any sampling issues that you might have in the process. So OEE is basically a product of the number of hours the machine's running for and how well it runs in the productivity phase and how many quality and how good your quality is while you're actually in production phase.

Yeah. So you have availability and then you call it productivity. Sometimes I've heard it called performance. Same thing. And then quality. So you multiply those three, three numbers together and you get your OEE right.

Correct.

You know, back in my corporate world days, you know, I worked at a company and we were definitely trying to monitor and improve oee. And I tell you, one of the biggest challenges that we face, and this was, you know, more than 10 years ago. So I know things have come a long way since then, but you know, having operators, maybe they're running a CNC machine or something like that. And you know, anytime the machine stopped or whatever it might be, you know, we started with a piece of paper and said just write down, you know, what the why used, why it stopped or why you had to stop and try to monitor it. And then we eventually spent some money on some fancy software and there are some of these big fancy touch screens next to the machine where they're tagging their various types of downtime. What has been your experience with OEE and tracking it at an operator level, Ron?

That's a great question, I think, if you ask me. Ron, the maturity of any TPM implementation for the matter, any implementation is the maturity of the problem solving in the business. And one of the key drivers for problem solving is data. If you have the right data going into your problem solving activities, then the quality of the problem solving just goes up exponentially. Like you say, in most businesses, people still use the paper and pen method. There's nothing wrong with that. You still engage with the process. You actually record your downtime or defects or whatever it might be, or quality samples or whatever it might be. You have different ways of recording data. And like you say, things have come a long way as well. But the fourth industrial revolution upon us, there's so many digital dashboards out there. You know, all you have to do is plug into the PLC of the machine and, and you have this automated software that actually gives you trends and dashboards and talks about how long the machine's been down for, what are the key defects coming from it and puts it out in a nice visual format that anybody from the shop floor can access from top management all the way down to the operator. And like I said earlier, it's about responding to deviations. And these digital tools these days can actually assist in quicker responds to the deviation that comes from the process.

So what would you say if you were walking into an organization practicing tpm? How would you go about measuring what you would consider their maturity with tpm, what would you be looking for?

So I'd be looking for the quality of the problem solving. I think that's one of the key things that I usually look for. So obviously have the pillar boards and the usual metrics that go with tpm. But I think one of the key drivers that I think drives any business forward is how many problems do you find and how many problems do you actually fix and how well do you fix them? And this can easily be done. Sometimes a simple conversation gets you going in that direction. Sometimes it could be looking at the go see sheet and seeing a typical A3 sheet or A5Y sheet or whatever you call it on how people actually have done problem solving on the flow and what kind of problems have they been tackling as well. So I think that will be one of the key metrics to understand the maturity of the business in terms of its CI implementation.

Yeah, yeah. Great job. So what do you suggest? Eventually, Gambling Academy, we'd be here to support everybody with some training. But in all seriousness, if someone wants to learn more about tpm, is there any, maybe some books or some resources, some conferences or something like that that you would. That you would suggest folks look into?

Sure. I mean, one of the key industries, I think GIPM is one of the older enterprises that actually supports the implementation of tpm and they've done a number of books, Ron, that people usually refer to. They have these TPM textbooks and they're quite detailed, quite elaborate. So I would recommend anyone starting off at TPM to refer to one of those books. But again, like I said, if you have a good coach in tpm, that usually has a lot of merit.

Yeah, for sure.

In the implementation.

Yeah. What I'll do is we'll consolidate, maybe we'll work together. Balaji and get a list of books and we'll link to them in the show notes for this episode so folks can go and do some learning that way. The show notes for this episode will be gembapodcast.com this is 313 episode 313. So we'll link to all those. Balaji. So I know it's now 6:30, so it's time for breakfast, I guess for you, Balaji.

Almost.

Yeah. So maybe a quick nap, you know, if you got up a little early. But thank you again for coming on. It's been really fun chatting with you. I sure appreciate you sharing your valuable time with us. So maybe let's finish up.

My pleasure.

Yeah, let's finish up maybe with some final words of wisdom that you have for folks who are. Who are on the TPM journey or who are thinking of beginning it. Some parting thoughts?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think firstly, congratulate yourself if you've embarked on a journey of TPM or any CI implementation for that matter. And one of the key, I think, thoughts that I would probably impart on the audience is that progress is not inevitable. Change is not always a precursor for progress. It's actually driven by the choices we make. So if you make the right choices and if you have, you know, if you build the right capability and right engagement in the shop floor and, you know, across the different levels of management, then progress happens. But it is not an automatic, it's not an automatic change. Progress is not always, you know, happening. If you just do a CI implementation, you have to make the right choices while you're actually implementing it to actually have that the right business outcome you're looking for.

Yeah, wonderfully said. All right, Balaji, what's the best way for folks to connect with you directly?

So I'm on LinkedIn. I think it's probably the easiest way to get in touch with me, Ron. So it's my first name and my last name. So Balaji Chandasekhar. And I'm on LinkedIn. And yeah, so that's probably the best way to get in touch with me.

Right. And we'll link to that as well in the show notes. Again, genbapodcast.com at is 3313 is this episode. So, Balaji, thank you again for coming on and really enjoyed it. Keep up the great work and maybe we'll have you on down the road if we're doing some more deeper, deeper dives into tpm. Maybe we'll take a pillar at a time, you know, and maybe go through the intricacies of that individual pillar. That might be a fun, fun way to spend some, some time.

Sounds, sounds really exciting. Thank you very much, Sean. Thanks for having me on this. It's a pleasure talking to you.

All right, take care of you too.

Thanks, Ron.

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