India: Improved plant maintenance to achieve zero breakdowns needed a different and new mind-set of maintenance, said Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, Minister of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, Government of India, while delivering the Inaugural address at the Conference on Maintenance Practices through TPM to achieve ZERO Breakdowns. This conference is running concurrent to the Industrial Maintenance Expo 2010 in New Delhi from the 4th to 6th August, at the NSIC Exhibition Complex. Calling upon industry not to adopt a penny-wise pound- foolish approach to the specialist area of equipment maintenance, he announced that Government and industry should jointly wage a war on breakdown and corrosion. Thanking the Japanese, in particular JIPM, for having introduced the concepts of TPM in the Indian shop-floors to establish best practices and improve capacity utilization, over the last 12 years, he noted with satisfaction the growing number of TPM Award companies, more than the 150 mark.. However, he noted with concern the 15 to 20% loss to production costs through maintenance loss and breakdowns as also the losses due to corrosion. Through awareness and incentives, he estimated that such loss prevention could further contribute 3 % to the national GDP. The Central Public Enterprises could effect major cost savings through corrosion prevention and breakdown control, he noted.

Mr B S Meena, Secretary, Department of Heavy Industry, Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, Government of India in his address underlined the larger role of internal competitiveness and capacity utilization as a part of growth strategy. He hailed the first ever Industrial Maintenance Expo as an excellent example of Government-CII partnership which featured over 100 exhibitors. He suggested that Central Public Enterprises with over 100,000 employees and a combined turnover of over Rs 38,000 crores, could greatly benefit through TPM and prevention of corrosion. Such events should become a regular feature, once in 2/3 years, he also suggested.

Mr K N Shenoy, Chairman, CII Institute of Quality and Past President, CII addressing the Conference recounted the stellar role played by the Institute of Quality, in the last decade, in the areas of training, advisory and consultancy services in building the competency of Indian Industry. More than three lakh managers had benefitted from the implementation of TPM, TQM, Six Sigma and Lean. The CII-EXIM Bank Business Excellence Award, with over 300 trained assessors, as a true practical and non prescriptive blueprint for excellence, was available to industry for benchmarking. Maintenance losses, ranging between 5 to 10 %, was far too above global benchmarks and needed attention, he said.

Earlier, in his welcome address, Mr Rajive Kaul, Chairman, CII Trade Fair Council thanked the Ministry of Heavy Industries for the unstinted support in making the first ever Industrial Maintenance Expo a success. With the participation of over 100 exhibitors, it would improve manufacturing competitiveness of India, making it an emerging global manufacturing hub.

Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry, summing up the inaugural session in his Closing Remarks and Vote of Thanks stressed that manufacturing was the key to a 20% GDP by 2025 in which such loss prevention efforts would play an important role. Thanking the Steering Committee, Indo German Chamber of Commerce, various Embassies and participants for their support to this first ever Industrial maintenance Expo, he noted with satisfaction the participation of over 100 exhibitors, both Indian and Overseas and assured that in future such events would be taken to other parts of the country as well.

The importance of the conference is underlined by the fact that currently companies are loosing 5-10 % of production time through breakdowns due to poor Maintenance practices, despite their best efforts. Besides the resultant production loss and hardships for the Maintenance personnel, increased maintenance costs affect their bottom-lines.

TPM Club India, CII, which has been doing pioneering work to support Indian Industry to achieve ZERO Breakdowns while reducing the maintenance costs, together with the Department of Heavy Industries (DHI), Government of India, organized this one day conference to spread the knowledge of the methodology to be implemented for successfully achieving ZERO Breakdowns with reduced Maintenance Costs! Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), a powerful mantra, offers a highly structured method for drastically reducing Breakdowns and maintenance costs and has been very successfully implemented in many Indian companies including the PSU’s.

The Conference, hosting 18 speakers, besides having a session on Management Solutions for Maintenance Practices, will show-case four very important aspects to achieve ZERO Breakdowns, namely, Supporting Autonomous Maintenance, Planned Maintenance Activities, Reduction of Maintenance Activities and Reliability Centered Maintenance.

Source:http://www.cii.in/NewsRoom.aspx?enc=SO0wa+TYDvk3FXKFO1bn1Q==

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