(One of our colleagues found out about Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). It is an established approach towards maintenance and often used in lean operations. Well, some of the people in our office thought it would be interesting to extrapolate the concept to other areas and this is what happened - Editor)

Total Productive Maintenance, well, only an engineer can think of a name like this. Actually once you get away from the macho jargon, there is a lot of good stuff there. We thought we’d extrapolate our colleagues’ ideas on TPM and bring it to the broader community beyond engineers.

One of TPM’s top tools is this concept called “Overall Equipment Effectiveness”(OEE). We reckon this can be applied to things other than “equipment”. Things like process and people, for example. (Oh yes, we are not apologising for the acronyms, we didn’t make ‘em up, we just use ’em!) OEE has three components - Availability (the time the equipment is in use), Performance (the speed the equipment is running compared to the designed speed) and Quality (the rate of defects from the equipment).

Let’s look at what TPM can tell us about our processes first.

	Last week, one of our colleagues went to a post office to send off her back taxes. This was her report: It was lunchtime and out of 10 counters, only 5 were working (our colleague assumed the others were at lunch, on holiday or called in a “sicky”). So the Availability was 0.5 (half). When our colleague got to the counter, she was told not to use “Recorded Delivery” because the compensation is much lower if the letter is lost and also it takes longer. Since our colleague was worried about having to pay fines on top of back taxes, she decided to use the next day delivery or Special Delivery - guaranteed for next day 1PM. Unfortunately, the forms were by the wall and she had to join the line of people again. Since the process had to run again, Performance was also 0.5 (again, half). When she got to the counter again, the letter was stamped, a receipt was given and the Inland Revenue got their money by 1PM the next day. Quality is, well, let’s be nice and call it 100% (99% seemed a bit petty). Since OEE = Availability x Performance x Quality , then for our post office this becomes:           0.5 x 0.5 x1.0 x 100% = 25% Oops- the investment in the post office is returning a "value-added" at 25%? This sounds terrible. But let’s have a closer look. The post office is paying overheads at 100%, but it does not use fewer lights or heat with only 50% staff. Better scheduling, better management and leadership may contribute towards a better availability. One of the opportunities for serving customers (or earning income) was lost as the transaction did not happen. The same customer was served twice but only one transaction was made. A big sign with recommended post office products will probably sort out this lost performance.

No matter how good you and your colleagues are at doing the actual job, if people are not there, you won’t deliver a great deal of value. If the processes are poorly thought through, you are also hampered in delivering full value.

after the process, we now come to individuals. Can TPM help us to work more effectively? OEE can be redefined for individuals as:

• Availability - the capacity to “do”
• Performance - the way we work
• Quality - the added value of our work

Availability is really a pragmatic way of looking at the work we have to do. We can enhance our capacity to do by: Doing things we are good at - if we stick to things we are good at, we are generally more successful Having work practices that match our style - doing things “against the grain” is a sure way to aggravate yourself and reduce the capacity to “do” Understanding the significance of “event” and “clock” times - some situations are run by the clock and others are run by achievements, knowing the difference can mean different scheduling, resource allocations and an easier time Having advance information or "intelligence" Having the right skills & experience Discipline to manage ourselves

Performance is not about project management software and to-the-minute plans, it is about the way we deliver value. Some of the elements of success in this area are:

• Deploying your knowledge, experience, skills and competences - if you are not using them effectively, what’s the point of having them?
• Maintaining effective relations with others - making enemies is not really what work is all about
• Awareness of surroundings - don’t be so focussed on your own area that you miss the bigger picture
• Right tools - this certainly is the same for a mechanic doing maintenance, wrong tools mean a bodged job

Quality is one thing everyone reckons they are familiar with, except your concept of quality is very unlikely to be the same as mine!

Furthermore, we need to appreciate the difference between absolute quality (3.4 defects in 1 million opportunities - 6 Sigma quality) and relative quality (the food tastes better here...). In daily life, absolute quality is hard to measure (well, you can measure actual train and bus times versus timetables, but hey, get a life!), so we tend to go for relative quality in most human interactions.

We can enhance the relative quality of our work readily by:

• Having the “Right”information
• Using the “Right” tools and techniques
• Ability to solve problems - having the “Right” tools and information give us a better chance in solving problems, but what is “Right”?
• Having a “big picture” view gives us a greater chance of getting it “Right”, as will:
• Understanding what the customer wants

It is clear that any OEE calculations for personal effectiveness will be much more difficult, but that’s what consultants are for- we’ll work it out for you (for a fee, let’s be real here!). Maybe we should call it OE - Overall Effectiveness, as well.

We reckon TPM does work in daily life outside traditional maintenance, and we feel you would benefit from having a think about your own OE (and perhaps consider how you can improve it).

(Oh yes, our colleague did manage to get her back taxes paid on time, so no fines this time. Otherwise there will be an article next year on how TPM helps you to pay tax on time!)