Relationship with other Pillars and the Organization

Clearly, the Focused Improvement Pillar exists to:

- Drive the zero defect mentality.

- Empower the organization with problem solving capability.

- Ensure that F.I. improvement teams are chartered to solve the priority    problems.

- Track F.I. application and contribution to results.

- Educate leadership on the value of loss elimination.

This means eliminating losses and solving problems associated with all other pillar technologies and systems.  It provides the technical expertise, focus, and mechanisms to eliminate difficult problems. Focused Improvement is done by all teams and in all organizations.

A very close synergistic relationship should exist between Focused Improvement and Autonomous Maintenance, Planned Maintenance, and Quality Pillar. This is shown in the picture below. The arrow points to the results improvement expected from the integrated application of the TPM pillars. The initiative management pillar needs to deliver initiatives that ultimately arrive at the site at the equivalent of A.M. Step 6. The F.I. Improvement process can provide a way to solve complex problems for all disciplines, functions, and pillars.

The various teams doing Autonomous Maintenance and Planned Maintenance evaluate their problems. Those problems that are beyond their capability are the basis for Focused Improvement themes. These themes are ranked and prioritized on a site-wide basis. The site leadership then determines which will receive priority and be staffed and which will be on hold. Each department or team, based on their capabilities, resource availability, and priorities can determine to work on as many Focused Improvement themes for which they have capacity and capability as long as this does not conflict with the choices made by the site leadership.