A novel operational approach to equipment maintenance: TPM and RCM jointly at work

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a new operational approach to equipment maintenance designed to exploit the complementary nature of total productive maintenance (TPM) and reliability-centered maintenance (RCM). Design/methodology/approach: This paper focuses on the operational aspect of the maintenance practice, proposing an equipment maintenance methodology that can be suitably adopted to define a new maintenance plan or check and improve an existing one. It integrates principles and methods of TPM and RCM and uses different tools to support decision-makers and operators. It proposes several worksheets which facilitate planning and implementing maintenance activities, that range from autonomous maintenance tasks to maintainability improvement actions. Findings: This paper exploits the complementary nature of TPM and RCM to design or improve maintenance plans for a generic system. The tools and worksheets presented can be helpful to practitioners and operators. Originality/value: While the integration of TPM and RCM is evidently a central issue in the maintenance management context, it has received limited attention in literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it lacks a structured practical equipment maintenance methodology that exploits the complementary nature of TPM and RCM. Therefore, the approach presented in this paper would fill the current gap.