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The purpose of this paper is to improve production effectiveness of equipment by facilitating the implementation of the key principles of total productive maintenance (TPM).

A sequential TPM-based scheme consisting of 13 procedural steps is proposed. The steps cover the basic aspects of a generic improvement system, i.e. planning, implementation, checking, corrective action and control.

The proposed scheme was effective in increasing the overall equipment effectiveness by 62.6 percent over a nine-month period only. This was a direct reflection of improvements in equipment availability, efficiency and product quality. A positive feedback regarding the smooth implementation of the scheme was also received from the responsible maintenance staff.

The proposed scheme is intended mainly to the manufacturing industrial sector, which utilizes failure-prone equipment in running operations.

This study presents an original scheme that tries to avoid the many barriers of success frequently encountered during the implementation of TPM schemes, as reported in the literature. This scheme is unique in integrating between 5S and safety, health and environment initiatives, by capitalizing on the close relation between the two initiatives, and simplifying procedures for measuring how well the two initiatives are implemented in an organization in one score card. Different from previous studies, the scheme treats both “education and training” and 6S as a foundation to the core TPM principles.