Improving business performance through TPM method: The evidence from the production and processing of crude oil

Nowadays, customers expect manufacturers to supply high quality products, on-time deliveries and competitive prices. The consequence of the increased market requirements is the need to maintain high reliability and efficiency of machines and the production process. The existing methods of production management have proved to be inefficient enough to maintain the company’s competitive position on the market. The Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) concept is one of the tools to maximize equipment efficiency by establishing an optimal relationship between people and machines. The aim of the article is to present the issues related to TPM and demonstrate in the process of empirical research that it serves the purpose of improving efficiency and supports quality in the enterprise. The considerations are based on the thesis that TPM is an economical variant of maintenance and guarantees stability, quality and maximization of production efficiency. The article presents the results of empirical research in an enterprise extracting and processing pre-crudes and gas from Caspian Sea. The data from the SAP management system of the investigated enterprise were used. Based on 146 maintenance orders for 40 devices, a correlation between preventive and corrective maintenance was determined using statistical tools. The main goal of the study was to show whether preventive maintenance reduces the occurrence of failures contributing to the elimination of disturbances in the production process. In addition, we analyzed real cases of equipment failures to answer the question whether the procedure of preventive maintenance of equipment in the studied population would prevent the occurrence of these defects. The empirical study demonstrated a clear impact of Preventive Maintenance on limiting the occurrence of equipment failures, and thus production disturbances.