Four units of Tata Steel have been adjudged winners of the ‘TPM Excellence Award - 2004’ by Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM). Every year the institute confers the TPM awards to applicants from all over the world, who are doing remarkably well in implementing TPM to increase plant efficiency. This is the first time in India, when a Hot Strip Mill, a Bearings plant or a Precision Tube Mill has achieved the distinction of getting the JIPM TPM Excellence Award.

Competitiveness, sustainability and the need to maintain its position as the lowest cost producer in the world had prompted Tata Steel to adopt various improvement initiatives which helped the company in achieving its goal of being the lowest cost producer of steel in the world. As part of this effort, in 1999-2000 the company undertook to implement “Total Productive Maintenance” or TPM at some of its critical units. These were the Hot Strip Mill, Precision Tube Mills (Tubes Division), Bearings Division (Kharagpur) and the Wire Rod Mill. The prime objective of deployment of TPM at Tata Steel has been to achieve a status of “Zero Accident”, “Zero Breakdown”, “Zero Customer Complaint” and “Zero Defect”. The remarkable deployment results of TPM in the four units had encouraged Tata Steel to challenge the coveted ‘TPM Excellence Award - First category” of JIPM, for all these four units.

Buoyed by the significant improvements achieved in these units, the deployment of this TPM philosophy has now been done at all the manufacturing and support service areas of the company including mines and collieries. As of now, more than 50 units of the company have initiated the TPM journey and are at various stage of its deployment.