OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic: A Practitioner's Guide to Benchmarking Your TPM Programme Across All Eight Pillars
- May 16
- 31 min read
Updated: Jun 5
By Allan Ung | Founder & Principal Consultant, Operational Excellence Consulting (OEC)
Updated: 20 May 2026
Allan Ung is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Operational Excellence Consulting (OEC), a Singapore-based management consultancy established in 2009. With over 30 years of experience leading operational excellence and quality transformation across manufacturing, technology, and global operations — including senior roles at IBM, Microsoft, and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) across Asia-Pacific — Allan brings deep shopfloor and strategic expertise to every engagement. He holds the following qualifications and recognitions: Certified Management Consultant (CMC, Japan), Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, JIPM-certified TPM Instructor, TWI Master Trainer, and former National Examiner for the Singapore Business Excellence Award. Allan has designed and facilitated TPM implementations and operational excellence programmes for organisations across semiconductor, automotive, industrial manufacturing, logistics, and public sectors. His clients include Temic Automotive (Continental), Analog Devices, Amkor Technology, STATS ChipPAC, Panasonic, Micron, Lam Research, Infineon Technologies, Dorma, and Tokyo Electron, as well as Singapore government ministries and statutory boards.
There is a question that surfaces in every TPM programme I have worked with, usually around the twelve-month mark, sometimes earlier if the initial enthusiasm has been particularly strong. The team has been working through the AM steps. The FI pipeline has projects running. The activity boards look busy. Someone in management asks how the programme is going, and the TPM coordinator gives a positive answer, because by the visible metrics available — number of projects, step completion rates, OPL count — things appear to be progressing.
And then the organisation decides to pursue a JIPM TPM Excellence Award, and the pre-assessment visit happens, and the gap between the programme as it appeared internally and the programme as it actually is becomes visible in a way that is deeply uncomfortable for everyone involved.
I have been present at both ends of that experience — as a TPM coach preparing client programmes for formal recognition, and as someone who has had to facilitate the difficult conversation that follows a pre-assessment that revealed the gap between self-perception and reality. What I have observed consistently, across semiconductor fabrication plants in Malaysia, automotive component manufacturers in the Philippines, industrial equipment producers in Germany, and precision manufacturers in Singapore, is that the problem is almost never a lack of effort. It is a lack of a structured diagnostic framework capable of revealing what is actually happening across all eight pillars simultaneously, at a level of specificity that makes improvement priorities obvious rather than arguable.
That is why I developed the OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic.
This article is a practitioner's guide to the tool — what it is, how it was built, how to use it, what the scores reveal, and how to act on them. If you are looking for a guide to navigating the JIPM TPM Excellence Award application process itself — the award hierarchy, the Self-Checklist scoring criteria, what formal assessment visits actually evaluate — I have addressed those questions separately in TPM Self-Assessment and the TPM Excellence Award: A Practitioner's Guide. The two articles are designed as complementary reading: the JIPM self-assessment guide tells you what the destination looks like and how to apply; this article gives you the diagnostic instrument to understand where you are starting from, and how far you have to go.
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The Problem That Existing TPM Diagnostic Tools Do Not Solve
Before describing what the OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic is, it is worth being precise about what it addresses — because the problem it was designed to solve is specific, and understanding the specificity matters for understanding how to use it.
The JIPM Self-Checklist — the official self-assessment instrument for the Award for TPM Excellence — is an excellent tool for a particular purpose: determining whether a plant is eligible to apply for formal JIPM recognition, and identifying which required criteria need to be strengthened before application. It covers the right categories, asks the right questions, and provides a scoring scale (0–5 per item) that is well-grounded in observable activity levels. I recommend it to every client organisation that is seriously considering the award pathway, and I have discussed it in detail in the companion article referenced above.
But it has a structural characteristic that limits its usefulness as a cross-pillar diagnostic instrument for the majority of TPM programmes, particularly those in their first two or three years of implementation. The Self-Checklist is award-entry-oriented — it is calibrated to describe the boundary between "not yet eligible" and "eligible to apply." The granularity it provides at the lower end of the maturity spectrum is limited, because that end of the spectrum is not where its primary purpose lies. A plant scoring 1.5 average on the Self-Checklist and a plant scoring 2.3 average are both well below the eligibility threshold of 2.5, but they are in very different situations that require very different interventions, and the Self-Checklist does not illuminate that difference with precision.
There is also a pillar consistency problem. Autonomous Maintenance benefits from the JIPM seven-step framework, which gives AM a built-in progression model that assessors and practitioners can reference with shared understanding. Step 3 means something specific. Step 4 means something specific. When someone says their AM programme is at Step 3 on 85% of target equipment, a calibrated practitioner knows what that implies about cleaning standards, lubrication, operator training, and visual management. No equivalent step framework exists in the same explicit form for the other seven pillars. This creates an inherent inconsistency in how different pillars are understood and assessed internally: AM benefits from structural clarity that FI, PM, QM, ET, SHE, EM, and OI simply do not have in the same codified form.
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic was built to address both of these gaps. It provides a four-level maturity model — Foundational, Developing, Defined, World-Class — across five dimensions for each of the eight pillars, giving practitioners a consistent vocabulary and a consistent benchmark structure across the entire programme simultaneously. It draws its content directly from Checklist C of the JIPM TPM Excellence Award and the JIPM Self-Checklist, translated into practitioner-level descriptors that make the assessment operational — not just scoreable, but actionable.
The Diagnostic Model: Architecture and Design Choices
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic covers eight pillars: Focused Improvement (FI), Autonomous Maintenance (AM), Planned Maintenance (PM), Quality Maintenance (QM), Education and Training (ET), Safety, Health and Environment (SHE), Early Management (EM), and Office/Administrative Improvement (OI).
For each pillar, the diagnostic defines five dimensions — the most important sub-domains of that pillar's activity. Each dimension is assessed across four maturity levels. The structure gives a maximum score of 20 per pillar (five dimensions, each scored from 1 to 4) and a maximum total score of 160 across all eight pillars.
The choice of four levels rather than the JIPM's 0–5 scale is deliberate. The 0–5 scale is excellent for calibrated experts scoring against well-understood criteria, and for that purpose it is superior. But four levels — each with a full, descriptive paragraph explaining what the level looks like in practice — are better suited to the cross-functional calibration exercise that a plant-level diagnostic workshop requires. A pillar leader, a plant manager, and a front-line supervisor can all read a level-3 descriptor and discuss whether it accurately characterises their situation. A numerical score of 3.5 on a 0–5 scale does not facilitate that conversation in the same way.
The four levels carry specific meaning that I designed to create genuine distinctions rather than merely gradations:
Level 1 — Foundational describes a state in which basic reactive practices exist but systematic infrastructure does not. Data is not consistently collected or structured. Standards either do not exist or exist on paper without being followed. Management review of pillar metrics does not occur at a cadence that makes the metrics actionable. A programme at Level 1 in a dimension is not failing — it is at an early, honest stage that requires specific infrastructure investments before analytical sophistication makes any sense.
Level 2 — Developing describes a state in which a framework exists and is being applied, but key structural gaps remain. The methodology is present but not yet disciplined. Results are visible in some areas but not consistently across the programme. The pillar is progressing but would not survive close external scrutiny without revealing significant inconsistencies.
Level 3 — Defined describes a state that I associate with genuine readiness for JIPM assessment consideration. A Defined programme has a consistent system operating across its scope. Data management is structured. Standards are documented and followed. Management reviews are regular and use pillar metrics as genuine inputs to decision-making. Horizontal deployment occurs — not just as a good intention but as a tracked process. A programme scoring primarily at Level 3 across most dimensions is not yet world-class, but it has built the infrastructure that makes world-class achievable.
Level 4 — World-Class describes a self-sustaining system that is contributing to management goals beyond the immediate pillar, generating knowledge that other plants or organisations can learn from, and producing measurable results that compound over time and are verifiable against JIPM Checklist C Category 10 benchmarks. Level 4 is genuinely rare in the programmes I have assessed, and it cannot be claimed on the basis of activity alone — it requires verified, multi-year performance data.
The score interpretation is structured in three bands. A pillar score of 5–12 out of 20 places the programme in the Foundational band — significant infrastructure gaps exist, and the priority is building data systems, management standards, and governance before investing in analytical sophistication. A score of 13–16 places the programme in the Intermediate band — the core methodology exists, but specific dimensions need targeted investment to reach the Defined level. A score of 17–20 indicates a Mature programme — and the question at this level is not whether the system is established, but whether it is genuinely driving compounding results, or has begun to calcify into a compliance activity.
What the Five Dimensions Cover, Pillar by Pillar
The value of a diagnostic framework is not in its structure — it is in whether the questions it asks are the right questions. The selection of five dimensions per pillar involved deliberate choices, and those choices are worth explaining. For each pillar, I describe the five dimensions and give particular attention to Dimension 5 — Results and Business Impact — which anchors each pillar's maturity model in verifiable outcomes rather than activity governance.
Focused Improvement (FI)
The five FI dimensions are Loss Visibility and Quantification, Project Structure and Methodology, Analytical Tool Proficiency, Horizontal Deployment, and Results and Business Impact.
Loss Visibility and Quantification is the foundational dimension because it is impossible to drive meaningful FI without understanding the structure of losses. The dimension asks not just whether OEE is tracked, but whether the loss-cost matrix is being used to convert equipment and operational losses into financial impact — and whether that financial translation is driving the selection of improvement themes. In my experience assessing plants across Asia-Pacific, this is the single most commonly underdeveloped dimension in FI programmes: teams are tracking OEE and running Kaizen events, but the project selection is not grounded in a rigorous loss analysis. The result is that effort is invested in visible problems rather than high-impact ones.
Horizontal Deployment is the dimension that most reliably distinguishes a mature FI programme from an active one. Many programmes produce good Kaizen results at the project level but treat each project as standalone. At Level 3, horizontal deployment is a tracked activity with explicit ownership. At Level 4, the countermeasures that emerge from FI projects are actively feeding the MP information database and influencing how new equipment is specified.
Results and Business Impact is the dimension that grounds FI maturity in outcomes rather than activity. At Level 4, the FI programme demonstrates JIPM Checklist C benchmarks: OEE at 75% or above, attained per line with all 16 major loss categories quantified and trending down, and the financial impact of completed projects validated with multi-year data and visible to senior leadership. A programme that can show excellent project methodology and full governance but cannot demonstrate OEE improvement at the line level is not a Level 4 FI programme — it is a Level 3 programme that has not yet closed the loop between activity and impact.
Autonomous Maintenance (AM)
The five AM dimensions are Equipment Condition and Cleaning Standards, Operator Inspection and Abnormality Detection, AM Step Progression and Standard-Setting, AM–FI–PM Integration, and Results and Business Impact.
The AM–FI–PM Integration dimension is one I added specifically because it is the most commonly neglected structural element in otherwise active AM programmes. It is not unusual to find a plant where the AM circle is progressing through the steps, the FI team is running improvement projects, and the PM group is managing the maintenance calendar — and none of these three activities are formally connected to each other. At Level 3 on this dimension, there is a formal routing process for abnormalities — a document, a handoff protocol, a tracking mechanism that converts an AM finding into an FI candidate or a PM update. At Level 4, the system is self-reinforcing: AM standards are updated when FI closes a project that reveals a new normal condition, and PM schedules are adjusted based on what AM inspection routes are actually finding.
Results and Business Impact requires that AM maturity claims at Level 3 or 4 be grounded in measurable data. At Level 4, breakdown frequency must be reduced by 50% or more from baseline, MTBF must be trending upward with multi-year data, and AM step completion must be verified across a minimum of 75% of eligible equipment — not just model lines. This last point is critical: JIPM assessors do not restrict their equipment inspection to the demonstration line. They walk randomly. A plant that has achieved Level 4 AM conditions on its showcase equipment but not systematically across its equipment population will be assessed at a lower level, because the standard is systematic deployment, not local excellence.
Planned Maintenance (PM)
The five PM dimensions are Failure Data Management and Analysis, Maintenance Method Selection (TBM/CBM), Maintenance Efficiency and Spare Parts Management, AM–PM Role Clarity and Integration, and Results and Business Impact.
Maintenance Method Selection is the dimension where I most frequently observe a gap between what organisations believe they are doing and what is actually happening at the equipment level. The progression from breakdown maintenance to time-based maintenance (TBM) to condition-based maintenance (CBM) requires a criticality assessment — a formal ranking of equipment by the consequence of failure — and most plants that believe they have a planned maintenance system have not completed a rigorous criticality assessment across their full equipment population. Without criticality assessment, TBM intervals are set by intuition or convention rather than by failure data, and the investment in predictive tools is often applied to equipment where the consequence of failure does not justify the cost.
Results and Business Impact at PM Level 4 requires: MTBF improved by 50% or more from baseline, MTTR reduced, planned maintenance ratio at 80% or above, and maintenance cost trending down — all with multi-year failure data confirming sustained reliability improvement. These are the benchmarks that JIPM Checklist C establishes, and the PM maturity score should reflect them directly rather than approximating them from governance indicators.
Quality Maintenance (QM)
The five QM dimensions are Defect Visibility and Data Collection, Root Cause Analysis and Recurrence Prevention, QM Matrix and Condition Standards, 4M Condition Control and Quality Assurance, and Results and Business Impact.
The QM Matrix and Condition Standards dimension is the one that most clearly differentiates quality maintenance as a TPM pillar from quality control as a QA function. The QM matrix — mapping failure modes to process steps, and then to the equipment conditions that must be controlled to prevent those failure modes — is the central organising tool of QM. Its presence at Level 3 means not just that the matrix exists and was created historically, but that it is a live document updated with every defect event and referenced daily in production management.
Results and Business Impact at Level 4 requires that QM maturity be demonstrated through Checklist C benchmarks: process defect rate at or near zero per line, customer complaint rate trending to zero, and zero-recurrence verified through multi-year data. Quality assurance must be condition-based at this level — maintained through equipment conditions rather than end-of-line inspection — with QM KPIs reviewed at the TPM steering level.
Education and Training (ET)
The five ET dimensions are Training Needs Assessment and Design, Skills Visibility and Competency Assessment, Maintenance Skill Training Infrastructure, TPM Qualification and Certification, and Results and Business Impact.
The Maintenance Skill Training Infrastructure dimension is where the Maintenance Dojo concept is evaluated. Organisations that have established a dedicated space for practical maintenance skill training — a Dojo equipped with equipment mock-ups, lubrication training stations, and diagnostic practice tools — are investing in something that has compounding value over time: not just in the skills of current employees, but in the organisation's ability to onboard and develop new technical staff systematically.
Results and Business Impact at ET Level 4 requires that certification rates are improving year-on-year, that skills matrix coverage reaches 90% or above for TPM-critical roles, and that training ROI is validated through measurable TPM performance improvement data reviewed at the steering level. Most ET programmes score poorly on this dimension because it requires closing a loop that is genuinely difficult to close: the loop between training investment and TPM activity performance. At Level 4, the programme can demonstrate that improvements in operator competency scores correlate with improvements in abnormality detection rates, and that technician certification rates correlate with maintenance system performance indicators.
Safety, Health and Environment (SHE)
The five SHE dimensions are Legal Compliance and Hazard Recognition, Accident and Near-Miss Management, Safety Measures and Risk Elimination, Environmental Management and Conservation, and Results and Business Impact.
The Near-Miss Management dimension is the one I use most frequently as an early diagnostic indicator of safety culture maturity. Near-miss reporting frequency is a leading safety indicator, not a lagging one — and in my experience, the plants with the best safety records are not those with the lowest historical incident rates, but those with the highest near-miss reporting rates relative to their workforce size. A zero near-miss reporting rate in a plant of significant complexity is not an indicator of safety excellence; it is an indicator that the near-miss reporting system is not being trusted.
Results and Business Impact at Level 4 requires: zero Lost Time Injury sustained over multiple years, near-miss frequency reduced and trending down, and environmental KPIs improving against set targets — all with multi-year data. Results must be benchmarked globally and reviewed at the TPM steering level. Safety excellence that exists in the activity board but cannot be demonstrated in sustained, data-verified outcomes does not qualify for this level.
Early Management (EM)
The five EM dimensions are MP Information Collection and Utilisation, Equipment Development Management System, Initial Phase Control and Vertical Start-up, Design for Maintainability and Operability, and Results and Business Impact.
The Initial Phase Control dimension is one that many plants discover they have no data to score honestly, because they have never measured vertical start-up performance. At Level 1, new equipment is commissioned reactively — problems are addressed as they emerge during ramp-up, and no one has defined what "good" looks like for start-up time or start-up loss. At Level 3, vertical start-up targets are defined before commissioning, measured systematically, and the results feed back into the MP information system.
Results and Business Impact at Level 4 requires: vertical start-up consistently achieved, Life Cycle Cost trending down across new equipment introductions, and the MP database actively preventing recurrence of known failure modes — all with results integrated into the product and equipment development lifecycle and verified with sustained, measurable return. The word "consistently" matters here. A single successful vertical start-up is not a Level 4 result. A sustained pattern across multiple equipment introductions, demonstrated by data, is.
Office / Administrative Improvement (OI)
The five OI dimensions are Loss Recognition and Waste Identification, Work Improvement Activities, Administrative Skills and Multi-skilling, Production Support and Supply Chain Effectiveness, and Results and Business Impact.
OI is the pillar that many plants treat as aspirational rather than operational, and it is the one where the gap between declared activity and actual activity is typically widest. The Production Support and Supply Chain Effectiveness dimension is where this gap is most consequential — because administrative inefficiency has direct impact on production performance that never appears in equipment-based OEE calculations. A Level 3 programme in this dimension measures administrative support effectiveness through production KPIs — inventory turns, schedule adherence, procurement lead time — rather than treating administration and production as separate performance domains.
Results and Business Impact at Level 4 requires: man-hour savings quantified and verified per loss register targets, administrative process lead times reduced, and DX reforms producing measurable efficiency gains benchmarked against best-in-class and reported at the TPM steering level. The same principle applies here as across all eight pillars: governance activity without demonstrated results is not a Level 4 outcome.
Scoring Integrity: The Four Rules That Prevent Score Inflation
Every facilitator who has run a TPM maturity assessment will recognise the problem I am about to describe. When pillar leaders score their own pillar, the scores they produce are systematically higher than what a calibrated external assessor would assign. In my facilitation experience, self-scored pillars average 1.5 to 2.0 levels above peer-scored pillars in the same session. The gap is not dishonesty — it is the natural result of three dynamics that are difficult to avoid in self-assessment: ownership bias (effort invested makes weaknesses feel smaller than they are), social dynamics (no one publicly scores their team's work harshly in a group setting), and evidence selection (pillar leaders naturally recall the best examples, not the typical ones).
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic addresses score inflation through four explicit rules that the facilitator must enforce.
The Completeness Rule. A level must be fully achieved before it is scored. If your practices partially meet a level, score the level below. Claiming a level you have not fully reached is the most common source of over-inflation, and it is also the most dangerous, because it creates a false impression of readiness that persists until a JIPM assessor walks in and systematically checks what is actually on the floor.
The Correlation Rule. Dimension 5 (Results and Business Impact) scores must not increase from one assessment session to the next unless the corresponding operational metrics have also improved. A rising activity score alongside flat or declining results is inflation, not progress. This rule exists because the most pernicious form of score drift I observe in biannual assessments is a programme that shows improving Dimension 1–4 scores driven by genuine activity development, while Dimension 5 drifts upward through optimism rather than evidence. Any Dimension 5 score of Level 3 or Level 4 requires multi-year trend data — and for JIPM award preparation specifically, a completed Achievement Sheet (discussed below) as the minimum verification standard.
The Peer-Pillar Rule. Before finalising pillar scores, compare scores across related pillars and check that they form a coherent, mutually consistent picture of plant maturity. A Level 3 FI score paired with a Level 1 loss register is contradictory. A Level 4 AM score paired with Level 1 PM integration is incoherent. Pillar scores should tell a consistent story about the same plant; if they do not, the inconsistency is itself diagnostic information — it points to a pillar that has been either over-scored or under-developed.
The Shopfloor Verification Rule. Any Level 3 or Level 4 score must be verified by inspecting at least three random machines outside model areas before it is accepted. The standard must be visible on the shopfloor — not only in documentation, presentations, or model lines. JIPM assessors apply exactly this logic in their evaluation visits. The honest self-check question that I ask at every diagnostic workshop is this: if a JIPM assessor walked onto your shopfloor unannounced today and inspected three random machines, would they see the standard described at this level — or would they see exceptions? If the answer is uncertain, score the level below.
These four rules are not additions to the scoring process — they are the scoring process. Running the diagnostic without them produces scores that feel validating but are not predictive of how the programme will perform when assessed by someone who does not share the plant team's optimism.
The JIPM Achievement Sheet: Why It Changes What Level 4 Means
One of the most significant clarifications in the OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic is the explicit integration of the JIPM Achievement Sheet as a verification requirement for Dimension 5 scores of Level 3 or Level 4.
The Achievement Sheet is a mandatory component of a JIPM award application. It requires the applicant plant to document multi-year PQCDSME indicator trends — Productivity, Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety, Morale, and Environment — with data that JIPM assessors can verify directly. It is not a summary slide or an internal reporting format; it is a formal evidence document that must demonstrate sustained improvement across all seven result categories over multiple years.
The reason I now make the Achievement Sheet explicit in the diagnostic is that I have observed a recurring pattern in programmes approaching JIPM assessment: teams score themselves at Level 3 or Level 4 on Dimension 5 across multiple pillars based on activity governance — regular reviews, updated KPI charts, steering committee discussions — without having the underlying multi-year performance trend data that the Achievement Sheet demands. They have the meetings. They have the boards. They do not have the data.
A passing score on the JIPM assessment requires three things simultaneously: all Required items scored at Level 3 or above on the Self-Checklist, an average score of at least 2.5 across all Self-Checklist items, and a completed Achievement Sheet verifying the PQCDSME trend data that underpins the high scores. Without that third element, the first two cannot be validated by JIPM assessors, regardless of what the Self-Checklist scores say.
The practical implication for how to use the OEC diagnostic is this: when a team proposes a Level 3 or Level 4 score on any pillar's Dimension 5, the facilitator should ask a direct question — "Where is the multi-year trend data that proves this?" If the team cannot point to a specific data series, trending in the right direction, across at least two to three years, then the score does not hold at that level, and the gap is not a scoring question. It is a programme development question that needs to be addressed before an award application is realistic.
How to Run the Diagnostic: Protocol and Facilitation
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic is designed to be used in a facilitated workshop setting, not as a solo desk exercise. This is not a bureaucratic preference — it is an empirical observation about how self-assessment scores drift when the social dynamics of group evaluation are not structured deliberately.
The workshop should involve the TPM pillar leaders, the plant manager, and ideally one or two front-line representatives from the shopfloor. Five to eight people is the optimal group size for productive calibration. The session should be allocated a full half-day — approximately four hours — for all eight pillars, assuming participants have read the diagnostic descriptors in advance.
Step 1 — Assemble the right team. Include the TPM pillar leaders, the plant manager, and key operators or technicians. Scoring alone multiplies bias; multiple perspectives reduce it.
Step 2 — Score each dimension honestly, and verify Level 3 and 4 claims on the floor. Read all four level descriptors for each dimension before selecting a level. Choose the level that best describes your current reality — not your aspiration. For any Level 3 or Level 4 score, verify by inspecting at least three random machines outside model areas before accepting it. The standard must be visible on the shopfloor, not only in documentation or presentations. This is not optional — it is the single most effective intervention against the model-line illusion that inflates most self-assessments.
Step 3 — Select only one level per dimension. A level must be fully achieved before scoring it. If your practices are between two levels, select the lower one. The tendency to round up — to score a level that is "almost" achieved — is the most common form of score inflation I observe in workshops.
Step 4 — Apply peer-pillar scoring. Pillar leaders do not score their own pillar. They score a peer pillar, and have their own pillar scored by a peer. This breaks the defensive dynamic in which a pillar leader's stake in a high score for their domain competes with accurate assessment. In a typical eight-pillar programme, the assignment rotates so that each leader scores the adjacent pillar and the overlap reveals cross-pillar consistency issues naturally.
Step 5 — Settle disagreements empirically. Scores are assigned individually and written down before any group discussion begins. Disagreements of two or more levels on any dimension are not resolved by averaging — they are treated as evidence that the dimension needs to be understood more clearly. Significant disagreements are settled by going to the equipment, not by debating the question in the conference room. The shopfloor does not have an ego investment in the score.
The facilitator's role is not to produce high scores but to produce accurate ones. This requires explicitly naming the dynamic at the beginning of the session — saying, aloud, that the purpose of this exercise is to find gaps, and that a low score on a dimension is useful information that the programme needs, not a reflection on the people responsible for it.
What the Modal Score Reveals: An Honest Benchmark
Over the years in which I have been facilitating TPM diagnostic assessments across plants in semiconductor, automotive, and industrial manufacturing, a pattern has emerged in the scores that I think is worth sharing directly, because it contradicts the self-assessment scores that most organisations are sitting on before an OEC diagnostic.
The modal score per pillar, for plants in their first three years of TPM implementation, is consistently between 8 and 10 out of 20. That places the typical programme solidly in the Foundational band on the OEC diagnostic — well below the Intermediate threshold of 13, and significantly below what I observe JIPM assessors expecting from a programme making a credible case for the Award for TPM Excellence.
This does not mean these programmes are failing. It means they are exactly where a programme at 12–24 months of implementation should be, if it has been building honestly: active, progressing, with real results in some areas, but with significant infrastructure gaps that will need to be closed before formal assessment is realistic. The gap is informative, not catastrophic.
What the modal score conceals is the pillar variation. Almost no programme scores uniformly across all eight pillars. The typical pattern is that AM scores relatively higher than average, because it has the seven-step framework to provide structural clarity. FI scores vary enormously depending on whether loss-cost analysis has been developed. QM and EM are the pillars where I most consistently see Level 1 scores, because they are the ones where the analytical infrastructure required for Level 2 is rarely in place in the early years. And Dimension 5 — Results and Business Impact — is reliably the lowest-scoring dimension within most pillars during the first three years of implementation, precisely because it requires the multi-year performance data that is simply not yet available to a young programme. That is as it should be; the diagnostic is designed to reveal that, so that teams focus on building the data foundation rather than claiming outcomes they cannot yet verify.
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic and the JIPM Self-Checklist: Two Instruments, Two Purposes
I want to be precise about the relationship between this diagnostic and the JIPM Self-Checklist, because they serve different purposes and the distinction matters for how you use them.
The JIPM Self-Checklist is the official instrument for determining whether your programme meets the minimum conditions for a JIPM award application. Its two pass criteria — all Required items scored at 3 or above, and an average across all items of at least 2.5 — define the minimum readiness threshold for a formal application. Using the Self-Checklist, a plant can determine whether it is ready to apply, and identify which specific required items need to reach the threshold before application makes practical sense.
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic operates at a different level of the same question. It is programme-development-oriented rather than award-entry-oriented. It is designed to reveal where your programme stands across all eight pillars simultaneously, at a level of diagnostic specificity that makes improvement priorities clear and allows resource allocation decisions to be made deliberately rather than intuitively.
The two instruments are most valuable when used in sequence. I recommend the OEC diagnostic as the first step — run it twelve to eighteen months before you intend to apply for a JIPM award, and use the results to design the improvement programme that will close your largest gaps. Then run the JIPM Self-Checklist six months before your intended application date, to confirm that the required items have reached their minimum thresholds and to identify any last-mile gaps in the award eligibility criteria. At that point, also confirm that your JIPM Achievement Sheet is current and that the PQCDSME indicators it documents are trending in the right direction. A programme that clears the Self-Checklist thresholds but cannot produce a credible Achievement Sheet has not yet met the standard for formal recognition.
Used this way, the two instruments are not in competition — they are complementary. The OEC diagnostic tells you where to invest; the JIPM Self-Checklist tells you whether you are ready to be evaluated; the Achievement Sheet tells JIPM assessors whether your results are real.
Reading the Results: From Scores to Priorities
After the workshop, the score profile across all eight pillars produces a radar chart that reveals the shape of your programme's development. Programmes with a relatively uniform score profile — where all pillars cluster in the same band — are typically constrained by a shared infrastructure weakness: inadequate data collection systems, a governance structure that reviews metrics too infrequently, or a management system that has not yet made TPM a genuine operational priority. The intervention for these programmes is structural rather than pillar-specific.
Programmes with high variance across pillars — where some pillars score in the Intermediate band while others score in the Foundational band — are typically constrained by resource allocation: one or two pillars have received disproportionate attention, while others have been left to develop on their own. These programmes usually have a strong AM programme and a weak OI or EM programme. The intervention is rebalancing: redirecting coaching attention, facilitating cross-pillar learning, and setting explicit development goals for the underinvested pillars.
Within each pillar, the dimension profile is the primary action-planning input. The lowest-scoring dimension within a pillar is almost always the right place to start — not because it is the most visible weakness, but because the diagnostic is designed so that the lower dimensions in the maturity model are the infrastructure foundations on which the higher dimensions depend. A plant that scores Level 1 on Loss Visibility and Quantification in the FI pillar and Level 3 on Project Structure will find that its Level 3 project structure is operating without an adequate loss-analysis foundation, which means its project selection is likely to be suboptimal regardless of how well the projects are executed.
Dimension 5 scores deserve particular scrutiny in the results review. A programme that scores Level 3 on Dimensions 1–4 but Level 1 on Results and Business Impact is telling you something important: it has built methodology and infrastructure that has not yet translated into verifiable outcomes. That gap is not unusual in a programme of 18–24 months, but it must be named and addressed explicitly. The risk is that programmes begin to treat high Dimension 1–4 scores as a proxy for maturity without asking whether those activity scores are producing the business results they are supposed to produce. The Correlation Rule exists precisely to prevent that substitution.
The Action Planning Framework
The diagnostic output feeds directly into the Action Plan section of the OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic tool, which structures improvement commitments across pillar, dimension, improvement action, target, owner, timeline, and status.
The most common failure mode at this stage is the production of a long action plan that lists every gap identified in the diagnostic and assigns everything to a two-month completion window. Plans of this kind are not action plans — they are wishful thinking documents.
The discipline I apply is to identify no more than two priority dimensions per pillar for the first improvement cycle, and to require that each action item have a verifiable output — not an activity, but a deliverable that can be inspected. "Implement the QM matrix" is not a useful action item; it is a project. "Complete the QA matrix for Product Family A's top three failure modes, with process-step linkages reviewed by the QM pillar leader by [date]" is a useful action item. The difference is specificity, verifiability, and ownership.
For Dimension 5 improvements specifically, action items must include data collection commitments, not just activity commitments. If the current gap is an absence of multi-year trend data on MTBF improvement, the action item is not "improve PM results" — it is "establish a consistent MTBF tracking methodology across all critical equipment, with monthly trend data available for review by [date], and a six-month baseline established by [date]." The Achievement Sheet is the eventual destination; the action item is the specific step toward building the evidence base it will require.
The action plan should be reviewed monthly in the TPM steering meeting, with score updates fed back into the diagnostic at six-month intervals. The diagnostic is not a one-time exercise; it is a biannual health check that reveals whether the improvement programme is producing genuine maturity gains or merely adding activity.
What This Diagnostic Does Not Replace
I want to be direct about what the OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic does not replace, because being clear about limitations is part of using any tool honestly.
It does not replace shopfloor observation. A diagnostic workshop produces scores based on the collective knowledge of the participants. That knowledge is necessarily filtered by the blind spots and optimistic interpretations that any group brings to self-evaluation. The scores should always be cross-checked against direct shopfloor observation — ideally by someone who did not participate in the scoring session, and who is looking specifically at the dimensions where participants disagreed most strongly and where the four scoring integrity rules were applied.
It does not replace the JIPM Self-Checklist for award application purposes. The JIPM Self-Checklist is the official required instrument for determining award eligibility, and assessors use it as a reference in their evaluation. If your programme is targeting the Award for TPM Excellence, you need to be fluent in the Self-Checklist criteria, not just in the OEC diagnostic dimensions.
And it does not replace the JIPM Achievement Sheet. The Achievement Sheet is not optional — it is the evidentiary foundation of any credible JIPM application. If your programme is building toward formal recognition, the Achievement Sheet data collection process should begin no later than the same point at which you run your first OEC diagnostic. The two to three years of PQCDSME trend data that the sheet requires cannot be assembled retrospectively in the six months before an application. Start building the evidence base now, so that when the rest of the programme is ready, the results record is ready too.
The Connection to OEC's TPM Consulting Practice
This diagnostic tool was developed directly from OEC's experience facilitating TPM implementations and award preparation programmes across Asia-Pacific. The dimensions were not derived from academic literature or theoretical frameworks — they were derived from the specific, repeated observations of what separates a TPM programme that achieves breakthrough results from one that remains perpetually active but underdeveloped.
The semiconductor plants in Malaysia and Singapore where I observed the highest AM step progression rates but the weakest PM integration were the data source for the AM–FI–PM Integration dimension. The automotive manufacturers in the Philippines and Thailand where FI projects produced excellent local results that were never horizontally deployed were the data source for the FI Horizontal Deployment dimension. The industrial equipment manufacturers in Germany and Singapore where the Training pillar was rich in activity but disconnected from skill measurement and TPM performance outcomes were the data source for the ET dimension structure. And the programmes across all industries where activity governance was mistaken for business results were the data source for the decision to rename Dimension 5, across all eight pillars, as Results and Business Impact — and to anchor it explicitly in Checklist C benchmarks rather than in the presence of management meetings and activity boards.
Each dimension in the diagnostic encodes a pattern of programme development that I have observed enough times, across enough contexts, to be confident that it is structural rather than idiosyncratic. The gaps it reveals are the gaps that JIPM assessors have historically identified in the same programmes, and closing them is the practical work of becoming award-ready.
For further reading on specific pillar implementation, I have written practitioner guides for Autonomous Maintenance, Focused Improvement, and the overall TPM framework — each of which provides the depth of implementation guidance that a diagnostic framework can identify the need for, but cannot itself provide.
Conclusion: Seeing Your Programme Clearly
The most valuable thing a diagnostic instrument can do for a TPM programme is restore the capacity for accurate self-perception that organisational familiarity and social dynamics tend to erode over time. Programmes that have been active for twelve months or longer develop a shared narrative about their own progress — a narrative that is almost always more positive than the underlying evidence supports, because the people who build the narrative are the same people whose effort it describes.
The OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic is designed to interrupt that narrative with something more useful: a structured, evidence-grounded, cross-pillar picture of where the programme actually stands, at a level of specificity that makes the next improvement step obvious rather than arguable. Its scoring integrity rules exist not to produce low scores, but to produce accurate ones. Its Results and Business Impact dimension exists not to penalise young programmes for lacking multi-year data, but to establish clearly — from the first diagnostic session — that activity and results are not the same thing, and that the distinction matters more as a programme matures and approaches JIPM assessment.
It will not tell you that your programme is excellent when it is not. It will not spare you the discomfort of discovering that the pillar you thought was your strongest is in fact your most structurally underdeveloped. It will not confirm your existing conclusions. What it will do — used honestly, in a properly facilitated workshop, by people who are genuinely committed to finding the truth about their programme — is give you the diagnostic clarity that makes real improvement possible.
That is, ultimately, what any good diagnostic should do.
About the Author
Allan Ung is an internationally recognized author, thought leader, and master practitioner in the field of Operational Excellence, with a career spanning more than thirty years at the absolute forefront of organizational transformation and quality management. As the Founder and Principal Consultant of Operational Excellence Consulting, a premier management training and consulting firm established in Singapore in 2009, he has dedicated his professional life to helping organizations bridge the critical gap between complex academic frameworks and practical, shopfloor execution. His unique advisory philosophy emphasizes the creation of "fit-for-purpose" management systems that democratize continuous improvement, intentionally stripping away unnecessary statistical complexity and "math anxiety" to empower frontline workers with accessible, high-impact problem-solving tools.
Prior to establishing his successful consultancy practice, Allan held senior regional leadership and advisory roles within some of the world's most prominent multinational corporations and regulatory bodies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Underwriters Laboratories. His deep expertise in managing large-scale quality transformations was further forged during his foundational tenure at Singapore's National Productivity Board, which has since evolved into Enterprise Singapore, where he actively pioneered national quality process initiatives and coached enterprises across multiple sectors on productivity enhancement. His extensive cross-border experience includes completing advanced consultancy training in Japan as a prestigious Colombo Plan scholar, an experience that allowed him to study the roots of lean thinking directly from Japanese master practitioners and adapt those methodologies for global deployment.
Allan’s comprehensive professional credentials reflect a deep commitment to mastery across multiple operational disciplines. He is a Certified Management Consultant accredited in Japan, a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, a JIPM-certified Total Productive Maintenance Instructor, and a Training Within Industry Master Trainer. Demonstrating his deep standing within the national quality ecosystem, he has also served as a Singapore Business Excellence Award National Assessor, evaluating leading organizations against world-class business excellence frameworks. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore, a world-class academic foundation that complements his highly practical, results-driven consulting approach. Through his development of proprietary methodologies like the OEC Green Lean Matrix™, OEC TPM Maturity Diagnostic, and the 4-Lens of Critical Thinking Model, Allan continues to stand out as a pioneering voice in management consulting, helping global enterprises transform their daily operational realities into sustainable competitive advantages.
His philosophy: "Manufacturing excellence is achieved through disciplined systems, capable leadership, and sustained execution on the shopfloor."
His practitioner-led toolkits have been utilized by managers and organizations across Asia, Europe, and North America to build Design Thinking and Lean capability and drive organizational improvement.
For enquiries about our facilitated diagnostic workshop, or discuss TPM programme development and award preparation support, visit www.oeconsulting.com.sg or contact us directly through the OEC website.
Related Articles in the TPM Practitioner Guide Series
This article is part of a practitioner guide series on Total Productive Maintenance. Related articles include:
TPM Self-Assessment and the TPM Excellence Award: A Practitioner's Guide — The companion article: how to navigate the JIPM award hierarchy, use the official Self-Checklist, and prepare for formal assessment.
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): A Practitioner's Guide The hub article covering the full TPM framework, its eight pillars, and the strategic principles that underpin effective implementation.
Autonomous Maintenance: A Practitioner's Guide A deep practitioner account of Jishu-Hozen implementation across the seven steps, from the first cleaning inspection to genuine operator ownership.
Planned Maintenance: A Practitioner's Guide — How to design and implement a planned maintenance system that complements Autonomous Maintenance and progressively eliminates unplanned downtime.
Focused Improvement (Kobetsu Kaizen): A Practitioner's Guide — The methodology for targeting, analysing, and eliminating the specific equipment and process losses that hold OEE back.
Quality Maintenance (Hinshitsu Hozen): A Practitioner's Guide — The eight-step methodology for achieving zero defects by establishing and maintaining the precise 4M conditions required to prevent defect generation at the source.
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