IMPROVED TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE USING LEAN PRINCIPLES IN AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURING AND MAINTENANCE

In the recent years the interest on improving aircraft manufacturing and maintenance methods to face the changing environments has become a prime research area. Total productive maintenance (TPM) development emerged as a result of these studies. TPM is an initiative for optimizing the reliability and effectiveness of manufacturing equipment. TPM is a team based proactive maintenance and involves at every level and function in the organization, from top executive to the shop floor. Parallel to this, Lean manufacturing introduced a massive paradigm shifting to production processes in different industries. Later lean aircraft maintenance development, a derived process from Lean manufacturing emerged. Despite its main focus on defect minimization, it was considered another facet of TPM. In this study we emphasize the key difference between the two practices and examine the possible improvements to the TPM from lean principles that ultimately would lead to a hybrid practice.