Companies trying to implement TPM in China, usually as a part of a corporate roll-out, face specific challenges, which may differ from those observed in Japan or in the West, more developed economies where those initiatives, or the consultants involved, often originate from.

Ten years in the Chinese industrial maintenance market have led Bruno Lhopiteau to observe that most MNCs face the same maintenance issues – and most try to apply standard western solutions.

Experience has shown that the earlier reliability and maintainability are taken into account in a construction project, the better. These should be specifically addressed from the design stage of a project, as illustrated below.Experience has shown that the earlier reliability and maintainability are taken into account in a construction project, the better.

More often than not, in Chinese plants, the maintenance workshop is a disappointing sight. A place where maintenance workers seldom enter – and who would blame them?

We see it all the time: companies attempting to reinvent the wheel, defining their own measures of maintenance performance, creating their own coding systems for equipment tags, failure codes, etc. This process may take months, sometimes years, and lead to very unsatisfactory results.