Total Productive Maintenance

Part 6: Manage Equipment Purchases

by Roger A.P. Fielding, BENCHMARKS

Some years ago, I was surprised when a senior vice-president, responsible for the development of manufacturing technology in a major corporation, announced that he had acquired the additional title of purchasing agent. I shouldn’t have been surprised, for his appointment marked the fact that the company had reached the fifth stage in implementing TPM.

Knowledge gained by studying the design and construction of extrusion presses, handling systems, etc. creates understanding and enables the extruder to keep up with technological change. By combining the roles of technology manager and purchasing agent, the company was formally acknowledging the growing complexity of production systems.Total dependence on outside manufacturers for all aspects of equipment supply wastes potential advantage. The extruder who blindly copies (or attempts to copy) an arrangement seen at another plant, in another country, will not be able to repeat its performance on home turf. The performance observed elsewhere can only be matched through an understanding of all aspects of an operation, and specifically, how the new equipment affects availability, productivity and recovery in the target market.

A company that doesn’t actively participate in the design and development of its equipment will lack the technical ability necessary for its effective operation and maintenance. The company will not have the ability to ensure that the equipment is always available for production. The life cycle will not be controlled.

Companies that ignore the principles of TPM sub-contract all aspects of the design and manufacture of their equipment. They have few qualified technicians on hand to ensure effective operation, and those they have don’t understand its operation, with the result that failures occur frequently, and take a long time to fix. They don’t achieve benchmark performance. This is becoming more evident as a new generation of extrusion presses, handling systems and controls enters service in the industry.

For the reputable manufacturer of extrusion equipment, the combination of the technological and purchasing functions in a potential customer’s operations can be the most challenging element of Total Productive Maintenance. With this arrangement, the potential supplier, be they Granco Clark or any other, has to (more than ever) under-stand how his equipment will be integrated into each customer’s operation, while encouraging the customer to take account of the supplier’s own vast experience gained as suppliers to the aluminum extrusion industry.

The modern extrusion press installation is a system for converting billet to extrusions. The successful extruder adopts the principles of Total Productive Maintenance—TPM—to get the most out of his investment in people, materials and machines. Lead time, from order entry to delivery, and the cost of conversion from billet to extrusion are minimized.