The effect of Total Productive Management practices on manufacturing performance through SECS/GEM Standard for electronic contract manufacturing companies (TOC, Abstract, chapter 1 and Reference only)

• Main Author: Krishnamoorthy Renganathan
• Format: Thesis
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://library.oum.edu.my/repository/1028/1/library-document-1028.pdf; http://library.oum.edu.my/repository/1028/
• Institution: Open University Malaysia

In an environment of intense global competition, it pays to consider both creative and proven systems that can be used to bring about effective and efficient manufacturing operation. Many electronic contract manufacturing companies have put forth huge amounts of effort and resources to achieve precise and reliable measurement of equipment performance. The objective of a concise measurement is to optimise this piece of asset for every dollar invested. However, it has failed on numerous attempts to achieve the desirable result due to hardware limitations, low degrees of data accuracy and the need for manual intervention. Integrating Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) methodology with SEMI Equipment Communication Standard (SECS) with Generic Equipment Model (GEM) enables data acquisition in a concise manner and keeps track of all real-time transactions that have taken place between the operator and the equipment. To achieve this integration process, a fast-track TPM implementation approach is required by re-engineering the TPM implementation process. The Re-Engineered TPM approach comprises of three TPM pillars (Asset Productivity (AP), Autonomous Maintenance (AM) and Planned Maintenance (PM)) instead of the original eight pillars. Apart from three TPM pillars, also included are SECS/GEM standard, direct and indirect labour utilisation hours, material and overhead cost. The main objective of this study is to determine whether the re-engineering effort, based on these three TPM pillars, SECS/GEM standard together with labour and cost, are able to minimise losses in production process and have positive impact on Output (Manufacturing Performance). The study also aims at evaluating whether the SECS/GEM standard integration with Autonomous Maintenance has the capability of real-time monitoring equipment performance on the production floor. Furthermore, the study aims to assess the impact on productivity, namely, the Output (Manufacturing Performance). The three years, monthly data for the study was collected from ten Electronic Contract Manufacturing (ECM) companies in Johor, Malaysia. The data was analysed through descriptive statistics, regression analysis and panel data analysis. Based on the panel data analysis, the Hausman Test revealed that the Fixed Effects model was found to be the optimal model for this study. The result shows that six independent variables were significant, while one independent variable was not. The insignificant independent variable was SECS/GEM standard integration with Autonomous Maintenance. Further analysis was conducted through a qualitative study. The additional analysis shows that ECM companies do not fully understand the possible application of the SECS/GEM standard integration with Autonomous Maintenance in their manufacturing environment. Therefore, minimum effort was deployed by ECM companies in incorporating this standard into their equipment maintenance platform. However, these days many ECM companies have started to purchase equipment with SECS/GEM standard in order to facilitate smoother future integration with Autonomous Maintenance or with other TPM pillars. This total integration of TPM (three pillars), SECS/GEM standard, labour and cost provides an avenue to monitor and address the operational losses in the production equipment in a timely manner. This system paves the way to improving Output (Manufacturing Performance).