What is OEE? (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)
OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is a significant tool for Lean Manufacturing and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance).
OEE highlights the “major losses” in the manufacturing process to regain “hidden capacity”. Improvement of the OEE means reduction in losses and improvement in production capacity.
In order to improve OEE, we need to focus on the three factors of the OEE: Availability, Performance, and Quality.
The availability factor represents the stoppage losses such as Breakdowns or Equipment Failures, Changeovers (Setups, Adjustments), and Waits.
The performance factor represents the losses caused by minor stoppages and speed reductions.
Quality factor represent defects/NOKs/rejects/scraps including rework.
World-class targets are Availability %90, Performance %95, Quality %99, and as a result, OEE %85. These numbers are defined based on practical experience, as minimums for which companies should strive. All of the companies winning the Distinguished Plant Prize, awarded annually in Japan to plants that had successfully implemented TPM, had OEE scores above 85%.
The reality is that most manufacturing companies, even today, have OEE scores closer to 55%. We work with hundreds of manufacturing companies, and we see more companies with OEE scores lower than 45% than companies with OEE scores higher than 75%.
You May Be Interested In : Smart Manufacturing for Continuous Improvement
How to improve OEE?
Improvement activities can be grouped as
1. Fire fighting
2. Fire prevention
In the event of a fire, we need to take action to extinguish the fire immediately. The next step should be to work on how to prevent similar fires.
Instant data help us with fire fighting. If we have a speed reduction problem at a machine, we need to know it at the incident moment. We can take action immediately and we can minimize the loss.
To prevent fire, we do 6 sigma projects or kaizen. The excellent plant is not the one that has the fastest/biggest firefight team.
Another grouping can be as
1. Perceptual
2. Systematical
Perceptual improvements are easy apples that are at the bottom branches of an apple tree. If you are aware of a problem, you can solve it or improve it. Most perceptual improvement ideas come from the workers themselves. They are less likely to be radically different, and therefore easier to implement. Small improvements are less likely to require significant capital investment than major process changes.
Systematical improvements are feed by analysis. For analysis, we need detailed and trusted data.
Tools to help improve OEE
As ProManage, we supply powerful tools to help your facility to improve OEE.
Trusted and Instant Data
The core system is based on automatic and real-time data collection from the machines. We minimize the human dependency on data collection.
In many manufacturing plants, the production data is gathered via forms manually. The managing team found many inconsistencies in the reports, so they cannot thrust the data. Also, forms are collected at the end of the shift and the reports are become available with at least one shift delay.
Trusted data is indispensable for management to make healthy and correct decisions, and a chance to collect all materials in one useful place.
Analysis of Thrusted Data
ProManage obtains detailed and trusted data and offers detailed and trusted analysis reports.
ProManage provides a wide variety of analysis reports, enabling you to identify your losses and discover the potentials for systematical improvements. These reports help to prevent fires.
You May Be Interested In : Control and Traceability from Order to Delivery
Visualization Instant Data
Visualization Instant Data feeds perceptual improvements. Nearly all manufacturing plants have operational excellence experts. They are equipped with all sorts of needed to make improvements. But when the workforce is not aware of problems, it is not enough. ProManage’s Andon / Dashboard solutions provide instant visualization on the shop floor for operators and shift leaders to create awareness and improve OEE.
Every manufacturing plant has shift leaders or such responsible for helping workers for problems. As every resource, a qualified workforce is limited and cannot deal with every incident. Visualization of instant data allows them to focus on the correct area.
Automatic Escalation
Escalation helps us with fire fighting. If we have a problem at uptime in a machine such as speed reduction, we need to know it at the incident moment. We can take action immediately and minimize the loss.
ProManage’s automatic escalation shortens the response time to problems and directly results in OEE improvement.