Total Productive Maintenance TPM Practitioner Training Course

Course overview

Breakdowns, minor stops, slow cycles and quality defects consume capacity long before they appear in a monthly maintenance report. When operators rely entirely on maintenance technicians, preventive work is poorly prioritised, and failure data is incomplete, plants struggle to improve OEE sustainably. This Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Practitioner course equips maintenance and operations professionals to turn chronic equipment losses into structured improvement work, with clear ownership across production, engineering and reliability teams.

Participants learn to establish a TPM operating model around the eight pillars, calculate and interpret OEE, classify the Six Big Losses, and develop equipment-focused improvement plans. The course covers autonomous maintenance, planned maintenance, focused improvement (Kobetsu Kaizen), quality maintenance, training and skills development, early equipment management, safety, and TPM deployment. Participants apply practical methods including condition-based inspection design, PM optimisation, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), 5 Why analysis, fishbone diagrams, Pareto analysis and loss-tree analysis.

Delivery combines instructor-led technical sessions with equipment-loss case studies, data-analysis exercises and facilitated workshops. Participants work from a realistic production asset scenario to create an OEE loss analysis, autonomous maintenance standard, PM improvement proposal and TPM implementation roadmap. They leave with a documented 90-day application plan and reusable templates that can be adapted for their own production line, utility asset or maintenance area.

The course is designed for experienced maintenance, engineering and operations personnel who need more than a general introduction to lean manufacturing or preventive maintenance. It is particularly valuable where an organisation is seeking to reduce unplanned downtime, improve operator care, stabilise equipment performance or launch a cross-functional TPM programme.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Calculate OEE and diagnose availability, performance and quality losses using the Six Big Losses framework
• Build an equipment loss tree and prioritised Pareto chart from production and maintenance data
• Design an autonomous maintenance programme with cleaning, inspection, lubrication and tightening standards
• Develop risk-based planned maintenance tasks using FMEA, failure history and condition indicators
• Facilitate a focused improvement workshop using 5 Why analysis, fishbone diagrams and Kaizen action tracking
• Create visual equipment standards, abnormality tags and operator-maintainer escalation routines
• Construct TPM pillar measures, governance roles and review cadences for a pilot area
• Produce a 90-day TPM deployment roadmap with baseline metrics, ownership and implementation milestones

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Maintenance Managers — who must reduce downtime while improving planning, labour allocation and maintenance effectiveness
• Reliability Engineers — who need a structured operating model for translating failure analysis into asset-performance improvements
• Production Managers — who share responsibility for OEE, operator care and removal of chronic process losses
• Maintenance Planners and Schedulers — who must improve PM content, work prioritisation and backlog quality
• Manufacturing Engineers — who need to design maintainable equipment standards and eliminate recurring equipment-related defects
• Operations Supervisors — who lead frontline teams responsible for daily equipment checks and escalation of abnormalities

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical exposure to manufacturing, utilities, process operations or maintenance environments and understand basic terms such as breakdown maintenance, preventive maintenance, work orders, downtime and production output. Familiarity with simple spreadsheet calculations and the ability to interpret basic equipment history or production reports is assumed. Experience using a CMMS, such as SAP PM or IBM Maximo, is helpful but not essential. Participants do not need prior TPM certification, advanced statistics, Lean Six Sigma certification, coding skills or specialist vibration-analysis expertise. Those new to maintenance should first gain workplace experience with equipment and maintenance workflows.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short instructor-led modules to establish each TPM method, followed by applied work on a realistic production-line case. Participants calculate OEE from shift data, build loss trees and Pareto charts, examine equipment abnormalities, and develop cleaning, inspection and lubrication standards. Small groups complete FMEA and root-cause analysis exercises, then present a focused-improvement proposal for peer challenge. The final day is a facilitated deployment-planning workshop in which each participant converts the methods into a 90-day pilot plan for an asset, line or maintenance area.

Course outline

Day 1: TPM foundations and equipment-loss measurement

• TPM purpose, principles and the eight-pillar model
• Equipment effectiveness versus maintenance activity measures
• OEE calculation for availability, performance and quality
• The Six Big Losses classification framework
• Planned and unplanned downtime coding principles
• Loss-tree construction for equipment performance analysis
• Pareto prioritisation of chronic losses

Workshop: Participants calculate OEE from a production dataset and produce a loss tree and Pareto chart identifying the priority loss for improvement.

Day 2: Autonomous maintenance and frontline equipment care

• Autonomous maintenance purpose and operator-maintainer roles
• Initial cleaning as an inspection and defect-discovery activity
• Cleaning, inspection, lubrication and tightening standards
• Abnormality tagging and defect categorisation
• Visual controls for equipment condition and ownership
• Centreline conditions and basic condition checks
• Escalation routes for operator-detected abnormalities

Workshop: Participants develop an autonomous maintenance standard, abnormality-tag process and daily inspection checklist for a selected equipment module.

Day 3: Planned maintenance and failure prevention

• Planned maintenance pillar structure and maturity stages
• Failure history analysis from CMMS work-order data
• Failure mode and effects analysis for maintainable assets
• Risk-based PM task selection and interval setting
• Condition-based maintenance triggers and inspection routes
• PM optimisation using failure consequences and task value
• Maintenance planning, scheduling and compliance measures

Workshop: Participants complete an FMEA and redesign a preventive maintenance plan for a recurring-failure asset.

Day 4: Focused improvement and quality maintenance

• Kobetsu Kaizen structure for chronic-loss elimination
• Problem definition using loss statements and target conditions
• 5 Why analysis for equipment-related failure mechanisms
• Fishbone diagrams for cross-functional cause analysis
• Cause-and-effect validation using evidence and trials
• Quality maintenance and equipment-condition relationships
• Kaizen action registers, benefit tracking and standardisation

Workshop: Teams facilitate a focused-improvement case workshop and produce a validated root-cause statement, countermeasure plan and benefits estimate.

Day 5: TPM governance, deployment and sustainment

• TPM pillar governance and cross-functional role design
• Pilot-area selection and baseline assessment criteria
• TPM scorecards for OEE, losses, PM and autonomous maintenance
• Skills matrices and capability development planning
• Early equipment management and maintainability feedback
• Safety, environmental and quality integration in TPM
• Ninety-day implementation roadmap and review cadence

Workshop: Participants produce and present a 90-day TPM pilot roadmap with measures, owners, milestones, risks and management-review points.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, SAP S/4HANA Asset Management, IBM Maximo Application Suite, ISO 55000

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions