Using Productive Maintenance to Optimize Production System, Case Study: Pharmaceuticals Industry

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a World Class Manufacturing principle that has been used by many companies to improve equipment life-cycle costs as well as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). This paper is a case study of the application of TPM principles at Datlabs Pharmaceutical Company’s Belmont Plant in Zimbabwe. An ABC analysis of the equipment was done to establish the critical equipment that required 20 percent attention to yield 80% results. TPM pillars were used to root out major losses in the plant and the results show improvements in machine utilisation and OEE for identified critical equipment.