Investigation of FMEA and TPM for improved reliability and quality of SMES

Despite their high enthusiasm and inherent capabilities to grow, SMEs in India are facing a number of problems like technological obsolescence, increasing domestic and global competition, and change in manufacturing strategies. To survive with such issues and compete with large and global enterprises, SMEs need to adopt innovative approaches in their operations. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is one of the most effective techniques to achieve high reliability and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) improves product quality, reduce waste, reduce manufacturing cost, increase equipment availability. This paper investigates the effect of different classes of failures on production process by using factor analysis. A survey was carried out to collect the data from different SMEs (473 industries) through questionnaire supplied to them. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 16 was used to analyse the effect of independent variables such as equipment problem, procedure problem, personnel error, and design problem, training deficiency, and management problem, external phenomena on dependent variables such as severity, occurrence, and detection. Also the effect of TPM pillars on quality of SMEs. This research paper further provides guidelines to SMEs to understand effect of FMEA and TPM on production process.