Talking about equipment management and on-site improvement of TPM staff

Equipment management is the basic work of enterprise production and operation management, and is an indispensable part of enterprise management. Equipment management plays an important role in safety production, environmental protection, and improvement of enterprise competitiveness. TPM refers to the productive maintenance activities involving all employees. It aims to improve the overall efficiency of the equipment, which is to maximize the functions and performance of the human-machine system, increase production efficiency and improve the physical fitness of the site. It is an equipment maintenance and repair system based on the preventive maintenance of the whole system and the participation of all personnel. Its management philosophy is: Who uses the equipment, who maintains it; cultivates operators with strong equipment awareness, and builds their own awareness of equipment maintenance.

Key words: equipment management, TPM, all employees, self-improvement, cleaning, spot inspection, visual management, standardization

Equipment management is the basic work of enterprise production and operation management, and is an indispensable part of enterprise management. Equipment management plays an important role in safety production, environmental protection, and improvement of enterprise competitiveness. The significance of equipment management lies in: creating first-class quality through equipment management and minimizing equipment life cycle costs and avoiding disasters due to equipment. The purpose of equipment management is to make the equipment give full play to its effectiveness, so that production activities are not affected.

TPM refers to the productive maintenance activities involving all employees. It aims to improve the overall efficiency of the equipment, which is to maximize the functions and performance of the human-machine system, increase production efficiency and improve the physical fitness of the site. It takes the preventive maintenance of the whole system as the process, and the equipment maintenance and repair system based on the participation of all personnel. Its management philosophy is: Who uses the equipment, who maintains it; cultivates operators with strong equipment awareness, and builds their own awareness of equipment maintenance.

Western industrialized countries have put forward various equipment management theories and models, such as logistics engineering, equipment integrated engineering, full-staff production and maintenance, and reliability-centric maintenance. Our country has also put forward the idea of ​​comprehensive management of equipment. As one of the three elements of production activities, the equipment, to fully exert its effectiveness, must maintain the four states that the equipment should have, namely:

• ①No product defects due to equipment reasons
• ②Normal operation at the required time
• ③Equipment life cycle Cost minimization
• ④Safe, comfortable and user-friendly equipment.

However, how to improve the level of equipment maintenance through equipment management based on existing conditions and maintain the four states that the equipment should have is a common problem. The author believes that, combined with the company’s background of attaching importance to on-site improvement, integrating equipment management into TPM’s overall improvement activities, and attaching importance to on-site improvement is a simple and effective way to improve the level of equipment management.

First of all, it is clear that cleaning is inspection, and inspection must find problems.

There are many losses in our manufacturing site. In order to discover the various losses that occur on the site, people must change their concepts and ways of thinking about equipment. It is important that every operator must master the ability to observe equipment and the ability to find equipment defects. . Moreover, it is necessary to establish the awareness that the occurrence of defects and failures is “shame on the spot”, set an example, cultivate the thinking style of “own equipment should be protected by oneself”, and maintain a conscious attitude to prevent recurrence. Cleaning and inspection are the main ways. one.

Equipment inspection is to use human senses and necessary instruments to detect the specified parts of the equipment according to certain standards, methods, and cycles, so as to detect abnormalities, failures or hidden troubles of the equipment early, and take timely measures to repair them. And adjustment, a management method to keep the equipment in good operating condition. Equipment inspection is not only a management method, but also a management system, which should be well implemented and implemented in the enterprise’s equipment management work. Human beings must carry out disease prevention, health examination and early treatment for their own health; equipment is also the same as human beings in order to extend the life cycle of equipment, and to ensure that the various functions of the equipment during the life cycle can meet the production needs of the enterprise and prevent causes The occurrence of safety, environmental, and production quality problems caused by equipment failures should also be carried out in the same way as the human body. Early inspection, fault diagnosis and early maintenance of equipment should also be carried out.

Equipment inspection is a preventive and proactive equipment inspection process, which is the core of equipment operation phase management. In the equipment status management, the inspection system will play an important role.

Our company is carrying out 5S activities for the purpose of creating a clean and tidy workplace and eliminating process waste, and continues to deepen the promotion. It has successively carried out TPS activities, TPM activities and the current lean management activities, all based on 5S. , Cleaning is the basic work of 5S. Cleaning is to clean the visible and invisible places in the workplace (machinery and equipment), so that the worn-out can be restored as new and kept clean and beautiful. Its purpose is to create a clean workplace; maintain the stability of the equipment, reduce the occurrence of failures; maintain stable product processing quality, etc.

Cleaning activities are also very important to equipment management. Together with refueling and reinforcement activities, they are called anti-deterioration activities. By personally contacting the equipment through cleaning, you can experience “cleaning is just checking”. On the one hand, it is impossible to have a high level of equipment management in a dirty environment, and all well-maintained equipment is spotlessly clean; on the other hand, the basis of inspection is a thorough 4S, and the cleaning process is the process of inspection. , This is what we often talk about “cleaning is checking”. Careful cleaning of the equipment itself is the maintenance of the equipment. Dust, dirt, and foreign objects are the causes of equipment degradation and equipment failure. Only by cleaning the equipment and maintaining and managing equipment functions and performance can the adverse effects be eliminated. Cleaning the equipment is the process of inspecting the equipment and eliminating hidden dangers.

Careful cleaning of the equipment is a process of “close contact” with the equipment. In this process, it is easy to find some undesirable phenomena of the equipment. Cleaning is centered on the main body of the equipment to remove the dirt accumulated over the years. Cleaning is not only the cleaning of the surface of the equipment, but also the opening of the cover that is not frequently opened to thoroughly clean the inside. Through this kind of cleaning, contacting the equipment, understanding the equipment assembly and moving the equipment, you can find the bad state of the equipment, and observe whether there is leakage of oil, loose screws, vibration, abnormal noise, high temperature, yellow wires through the five senses. Aging, air leakage, etc. and other functional deficiencies are manifested. It is very necessary to deal with these unfavorable phenomena in time, and it is very important to avoid the occurrence of equipment failures and maintain good operating conditions.

Based on this understanding, it is necessary to change the practice that the 5S of the equipment and the maintenance of the equipment are respectively the responsibility of the operators and maintenance personnel, and require the operators to bear part of the equipment maintenance work, so that the equipment operators have the opportunity to achieve “self-preservation” and themselves To maintain the equipment used, professional and technical personnel can play an irreplaceable role in equipment maintenance, that is, to establish the physique of “self-maintaining your own equipment”.

Secondly, it is necessary to independently improve the defects found in the spot inspection.

In order to win in the increasingly fierce corporate competition, the necessary condition is to maintain the best condition of the equipment and maintain the best condition of quality, delivery time and cost. In order to completely eliminate waste and maximize equipment efficiency, efforts must be made to implement equipment improvements.

5S activities can cultivate employees’ problem awareness and the vision and ability to identify on-site management problems. Therefore, improvement activities after the initial results of 5S activities have been achieved are of great benefit to the promotion of the activities. On-site improvement emphasizes on activating the site, mobilizing the enthusiasm of employees, and continuously improving work. In the equipment management work, it is also necessary to stimulate employees’ problem awareness and enthusiasm for improvement.

In 2008, our company introduced independent preservation activities, the purpose of which is to cultivate operators with strong equipment awareness and to build their own equipment to maintain the physique. In the event, employees are encouraged to actively discover the problems and incompleteness of equipment and facilities, and make improvements by themselves; secondly, in view of the repetitive and typical problems of the on-site environment and equipment, the real cause of the problem should be found through 5W analysis—— That is, the source of occurrence, formulate key work plans, and carry out improvement activities.

The source of occurrence refers to the source of pollutants on the equipment, such as dust, liquid, cutting waste, noise, vibration, etc., or the direct cause of the problem. The pollutants produced by the equipment not only cause environmental pollution, but also the root cause of equipment deterioration, which must be addressed. The solution is to eliminate the source of occurrence, or reduce the amount of occurrence, or limit the pollutants to a small range.

The key is to do a good job in this area, inspire employees’ enthusiasm for improvement, and give full play to their talents. In the six rounds of self-preservation work completed in August 2008, the self-preservation activities for 205 equipment were completed, 5,250 minor defects were found, and a total of 1,802 minor improvements were completed, including many to prevent recurrence and use error-proofing devices. Processing quality and improvement for the source and difficult parts. Among these improvement projects, more than 1,500 items were put forward by team members through the excavation of specific situations, and they were paid attention to by professional factory leaders and technicians. After improvement, they achieved quite good results and improved the on-site working environment and equipment. The operating environment and status, for good projects, to declare results at different levels and give rewards, to a large extent arouse the enthusiasm of employees. At the beginning, employees thought that everything would be fine after cleaning, but as long as they want to do something with their own hands, they will inevitably have a belief that is directly connected to the results, and they will make unremitting efforts to this end. There are many examples of rewards after hard work. Not relying on others casually, doing it yourself, thinking about improvement, at the same time, it can increase the care and love of employees for the equipment. Everyone summarizes this improvement as a “discovery” improvement.

With the results, employees have seen the changes in the site and equipment, and the enthusiasm for finding problems and improving the problems has been greatly improved, which has caused a wide range of influences among the employees, and has cultivated a strong awareness of the problems of the employees. This awareness is based on their own posts. So it has a strong pertinence. Supplemented by the organic combination of the “individual proposal” reward system and the “excellent improvement case presentation” system, the enthusiasm of employees has been well mobilized, and many creative small improvements and small inventions have emerged while improving the site and equipment. , To a certain extent, the enthusiasm of employees to participate in the improvement has been greatly increased.

Third, the extensive implementation of visual management.

Visual management is to make management visible and clear at a glance. It is an intuitive way to expose the management status and operation methods, so that all employees can see with their eyes whether the progress of the work is normal. The implementation of visual management on site can expose problems and improve management efficiency. In the production activities of enterprises, various abnormal problems occur every day. If these abnormal problems cannot be discovered and dealt with in time, it will inevitably affect the normal progress of production activities. Visual management is an important means to make anomalies and problems obvious. Through visual management, the ideal state and the actual state or the normal state and the abnormal state (that is, the expected state and the existing state) are revealed, so that employees can directly feel “different from usual”, so that employees can discover while working Anomalies and problems, early detection of anomalies and problems, and early countermeasures.

At the same time, the visual management of the production site allows managers to have direct access to the facts of the site as soon as they enter the site, and can see the problem at a glance, so that they can give instructions on the spot or make correct treatments. Therefore, it can be considered that the implementation level of visual management is an important indicator to measure the level of on-site management.

Visual management makes management efficient, and smooth information is the prerequisite for management efficiency. The application of visual management can strengthen communication, so that even if all staff do not have a special understanding, they can correctly grasp the situation on the spot and understand their position and role through observation alone. Efficiently managed enterprises have smooth communication of information both horizontally and vertically, and the various management levels of the enterprise exist to provide necessary support to the production site. No matter what instructions the management gives, it should be the source. From the specific needs of the production site. Therefore, the smooth flow of information exchange and the reduction of management levels will help the instructions issued by management more accurately reflect the actual situation of the production site and avoid the occurrence of interference with production activities.

It can be seen from this that the application of visual management in on-site management is very extensive. In equipment management work, we must also pay attention to the application of visual management techniques, so that we can understand the current state and anyone can judge this state. The quality of the report clearly points out the level of treatment methods when the state is abnormal.

Common visual management items in equipment management mainly include: clear indications of safety precautions, clear indications of complex and important operations, clear indications of the location of inspection items, clear indications of positive abnormal ranges, indications of valve opening and closing status, correct flow direction, Identification of the direction of rotation, color separation management of different media pipelines, trace management of repair spare parts, repair tools, etc.

The items that can be implemented visual management are far more than those listed above. It is applicable to all aspects of equipment management activities. The “visual management” of equipment mainly refers to “easy to implement inspection” and “easy to find abnormalities”. Clear management. To sum up, the main points of visual management are: know what the object of spot inspection management is; know the function and structure of spot inspection management; know the normal status and proper posture of spot inspection management; know spot inspection methods and abnormalities Judgment criteria; know the disposal method of inspection objects… The author believes that the following aspects should be focused on improving the visual management of equipment:

• 1. Lubrication: the color identification of the oil filling port; the on-line and off-line identification of the oil level; the oil type label and cycle identification, the oil type identification of the oil can (the classification identification of the refueling tool).
• 2. Mechanical elements: the coincidence mark on the bolts and nuts after the inspection (I line is aligned); the color identification of the bolts that need to be worked in the preservation, the color identification of the bolts and holes that do not need to be worked; the conveyor belt, chain form, motor Identifies the direction of rotation.
• 3. Oil pressure, air pressure, and other aspects: set pressure range identification; oil volume identification and liquid level identification of the oil injector; input and output identification of piping connection; identification of liquid flow direction; other, identification of solenoid use , The identification of oil type, current value, temperature, flow rate, etc.
• 4. Set up the inspection channel. In places where equipment is concentrated, it is necessary to consider setting up inspection channels. The inspection channel can be set up by drawing lines on the ground or setting up road signs, and then along the inspection channel, according to the location of the inspection operation points, set up a number of inspection operation stations. In this way, the inspector walks a circle along the inspection channel, and can efficiently complete the inspection of equipment at each site in an area.

The following aspects should be paid attention to when setting up the inspection channel: the shortest travel path during the inspection; the inspection items can be covered by the stations in the inspection channel; along the inspection channel, the inspector can easily find each site in the inspection station. The location of the check job.

The visual management of these aspects, one is to fully reveal the positive abnormal state and parameters of the equipment, such as the positive abnormal range of the instrument (pressure gauge, thermometer, oil level gauge, etc.), the positive abnormal position of the switch, the opening and closing state of the valve, the liquid The upper and lower limits of the bits are identified and so on. This not only allows the staff to know at a glance whether the operating status of the equipment is normal, but also improves the handling efficiency when a problem occurs, so it can play a role in improving work efficiency. The second is to indicate the matters that need attention, play the role of reminder and supervision, and avoid work errors caused by negligence and omission. Such as the periodic identification of the oil type label for lubrication, the classification identification of the refueling tool, the site setting of the inspection channel, etc.

Finally, carry out the standardization of work.

Even in the same enterprise, in the same workshop, in the same team, individual operators, and working environment conditions cannot be exactly the same. Good equipment management requires timely maintenance of equipment. What often happens is that equipment failures occur due to failure to perform necessary maintenance on the equipment on time. Therefore, the work content of equipment maintenance should be revealed on the spot as much as possible, and equipment management and TPM improvement activities should be organically combined and implemented in daily activities.

In terms of standard management in the promotion of TPM, our approach should be to formulate detailed inspection, cleaning, and lubrication standards from the point of view of zero defects, zero failures, zero losses, and work efficiency, and mark them with the method of illustration. Identify the corresponding parts, methods, and frequency, and combine with visual management to visualize the inspection, cleaning, and lubrication items, and make the items that are not easy to observe easy to observe, and the items that are not easy to implement become easy to implement, so who It can be seen.

Although a good equipment management system is more complicated, companies can improve the management level of the equipment and improve the overall efficiency of the equipment even through some simple TPM on-site improvements for all employees.