Adoption of Total Productive Maintenance Practices Among Large Manufacturing Firms in Mombasa County, Kenya

Abstract

Today’s operations managers face many challenges including globalization, ever increasing competition and dynamic technology. This necessitates adoption of world class techniques, like continuous improvement in maintenance management, in order to stay in business. This study traced the origin and subsequent practice of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) as a modern tool for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. It further examined the adoption of TPM practices in 21 large manufacturing firms located in Mombasa County. It also looked at the benefits, critical success factors and challenges to TPM adoption. A criterion was first developed to classify large manufacturers based on power consumption. A maturity model with five levels (ML1 to ML5) was used to examine the TPM adoption levels. Data was collected using a self administered questionnaire from the respondent firms. Descriptive statistics were then used to analyse the data and make conclusions. A comparison was made between the collected data and the maturity levels scale and this was used to classify the respondent firms in terms of TPM adoption. From the results, the respondent firms’ maturity level for TPM adoption corresponds to ML3 in the score card indicating that the TPM adoption is at a defined level. The results place large manufacturers in Mombasa County as having process management systems which depend on some specific constraints for the organizational responsibility or the technical systems. The results also indicate that the large manufacturers in Mombasa County have moved from the first two levels of TPM adoption namely initial and managed levels and are now at the defined level. With further improvement, investment and advancement, they can climb the next two levels of quantitatively managed and optimizing. The results identified increased quality and improved productivity as the key benefits resulting from TPM implementation. Further, the results showed that the most important critical success factor is co-operation and involvement of both the operators and the maintenance workers. In addition, top management support and commitment was also documented as a key critical success factor. Challenges to TPM implementation were identified as tight budgets for maintenance functions and pressure of workload. These were the highest challenges to TPM implementation faced by large manufacturers in Mombasa County. The researcher recommends that investment and improvement initiatives be channeled towards maintenance management so as to reach higher levels of TPM adoption. Enhancement of technological capabilities for maintenance management and especially enhanced adoption of computerised maintenance management systems (CMMS) should also be implemented. The adoption of outsourcing practices for maintenance management was also found to be low. It is hereby recommended that maintenance managers look into ways of adopting outsourcing of their maintenance activities as a means of reducing their maintenance costs. Outsourcing would enable the firms to tap into a larger knowledge pool as opposed to confinement with in-house resources.