Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP) Practice Exam

What maintenance strategy aims for zero defects and effective workplace design?

1. Predictive maintenance

2. Corrective maintenance

3. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

4. Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)

The correct answer is: Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance strategy that aims for zero defects and promotes effective workplace design. It focuses on involving all employees in the maintenance process, fostering a culture where everyone is responsible for the upkeep of equipment and work areas. This inclusive approach is designed to maximize equipment efficiency and eliminate losses due to defects, downtime, or inefficiencies. TPM emphasizes preventive measures, continuous improvement, and the involvement of frontline workers to identify and mitigate potential issues before they result in defects or failures. It seeks to establish a work environment where quality is built into the process, thereby striving for zero defects in products as a natural outcome of effective maintenance practices and workplace organization. In contrast, predictive maintenance focuses on predicting equipment failures through data analysis and monitoring, corrective maintenance deals with repairing equipment after a failure has occurred, and reliability-centered maintenance is a systematic approach to ensure that assets continue to do what their users require in their current operating context. While these strategies are important, they do not explicitly aim for zero defects or workplace design in the same holistic manner as TPM does.