ZF plant in Diepholz, Germany, wins this year's TPM award

The 324 employees of the ZF plant in Diepholz, that belongs to ZF Friedrichshafen AG's Car Chassis Technology division, produce control arms for automotive manufacturers like, for instance, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, or Ford. For this reason, the plant works in a competitive environment that hardly allows for product-related price increases. Plant manager Johannes Tabor explains: In order to stay competitive and sustainable in the long run, it is necessary to remove inefficient processes from production. This is the big advantage of TPM: its objective is to utilize production machines in a more efficient manner and to avoid unplanned downtimes and repairs. The success of the well-proven program is based on the fact that the machine operators increasingly identify themselves with their machines. In Diepholz, maintenance costs were reduced by 15 percent and overall equipment efficiency (OEE) was enhanced by 17 percent due to TPM measures.

Edward Hartmann, CEO of the International TPM Institute, awarded a prize to the Best TPM Factory of the Year during a congress which took place in Diepholz from the 23rd to the 24th of November 2010. At this congress, representatives of ZF and other leading companies presented their solutions for a successful TPM implementation to the benefit of productivity and quality assurance.