Implementing TPM in plant maintenance: some organisational barriers

Since the 1980s, quality initiatives, seen as critical for greater competitiveness, have gained much attention from British management under the influence of Japanese management principles. This has resulted in a widespread adoption of quality techniques such as quality circles, teamworking, customer care, total quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance (TPM), etc. This paper reports the finding of a study of the production and maintenance function of four processing/manufacturing companies. It intends to highlight the difficulties that these companies have been faced with in their attempt to implement TPM initiatives between the production and maintenance departments in order to improve organisational efficiency. The paper concludes that implementing TPM is by no means an easy task, which is heavily burdened by political, financial, departmental and inter‐occupational barriers.