Small and Medium Enterprises enhancement through TPM and TQM

Abstract

Purpose - Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Total Quality Management (TQM) are proved to be innovative improvement programs, mostly in industrial environments, that can increase companies’ benefits by applying them individually or in an integrated way. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are generally threatened in terms of competitiveness by quality issues and overall performance, whereas TPM & TQM are a possibility to solve them. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to explain how TPM and TQM can affect SMEs and determine which are the practices that can improve their results.

Methodology – This is a conceptual study and the methodology applied has been the content analysis by reviewing existing literature to analyze the specific and common practices of TPM and TQM related to SMEs.

Results – Besides confirming conceptually the validity of the improvement practices from TPM and TQM for the case of Small and Medium Enterprises, other practices are proposed as critical for a successful integrated implementation of both programs.

Contribution – To propose a model that assures a successful implementation of TPM integrated with TQM including practices that were not proposed previously.