Executive Summary

In this article, we look at maintenance and the way it is done and are there disempowering conversations going around the organization? Here, we talk about the problems regarding the receptivity of the people who need to embrace TPM to make it successful. There are out-front/visible conversations as well as invisible/behind-the-scenes conversation. They include corporate-wide assessments such as “Maintenance is wasteful.” A good example of a conversation is “that maintenance activity is a necessary evil”.  “The necessary evil” conversation arises from the simple fact that maintenance activity doesn’t contribute directly to the manufacture or delivery of anything. But modern organizations also agree that maintenance is necessary. So the conversation “necessary evil” gets created.