In a recent e-mail, a reader of my blog asked me, “How can we enhance top management commitment and involvement for implementing total productive maintenance (TPM)?”

This is a great general question to ask during any effort to establish excellence, maintain excellence, or transform excellence to a higher level. Specific to TPM, we would expect a high level of total commitment to be built into the education and roll out of the program because, as the name suggests, it is total productive maintenance. So the place to start may be to examine how well the education phase explained management's roles in supporting TPM.

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