{"id":3224,"date":"2026-03-29T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:41:15","slug":"tpm-killed-the-maintenance-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/tpm-killed-the-maintenance-star\/","title":{"rendered":"TPM killed the maintenance star"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(If you didn’t get the reference in the title, you\u2019re probably too young… Please enjoy the Buggles here<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many factories organize their maintenance departments as if they were fire stations<\/strong>: they only think of them when there is an emergency. This mindset shifts the focus toward maintaining a skeleton crew whose only goal is to react quickly to crises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have grown accustomed to the Maintenance Manager as a “Rock Star”<\/strong>\u2014someone who swoops in when everything collapses, offering a quick, creative, and often incredibly expensive fix. But more often than not, this brilliance is just a mask for a lack of strategy and misaligned resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the 1970s<\/strong>, when Japanese industry<\/a> began treating equipment care as a collective responsibility through Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)<\/a><\/strong>, the blueprint for success has changed. Modern maintenance departments need fewer egos and more teamwork<\/strong>. Individual talent must be balanced with a shared vision and a commitment to reliability over “heroic” repairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can we do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, you should congratulate the team for their quick response and commitment. However, once the storm passes, it is time to reflect on why we reached this point of catastrophe. The Kaizen philosophy has a specific word for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(the following paragraph is part of the DETECTA manual).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hansei<\/strong>: Reflect. What did we do wrong? What can we change? What should we avoid? Hansei does not look for culprits; it looks for the truth. Limit yourself to what you can control and be honest with yourself. If you deepen your knowledge of equipment and processes, even if circumstances do not allow for improvement, at least you will be able to increase your control and detect problems before they worsen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many factories adopt a reactive maintenance approach akin to fire fighting. To improve, they should embrace teamwork, reflect on failures using Kaizen, and prioritise reliability over crisis management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[367],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maintenance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/TPM-killed-the-main-star-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3275,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions\/3275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jorgebalaguer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}