Maximizing productivity and reducing waste is a never-ending challenge. Though manufacturers have been taking steps to accomplish these goals for decades, the intensity has risen in recent years as competition from global competitors has dramatically increased.
There are many things teams can do to meet their goals, and a key metric, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is pivotal to benchmarking success. Tracking and improving OEE values can be a challenge. However, as Chiara Ponzellini shares in a recent article in Fluid Power Journal, modern plant analytics software designed for lean manufacturing can help close the gap.
The importance of OEE
OEE is calculated using three factors: availability x performance x downtime. An OEE score around 80% is optimal, but most manufacturers hover around 60%. But while that gap is a problem, it’s also an opportunity.
“This means that most companies have hidden opportunities to increase production. However, plant teams can only improve what they can measure. Continually tracking OEE can uncover valuable opportunities to intentionally improve OEE that manufacturers would otherwise miss.”
Teams can do this tracking manually via spreadsheets or manual input into online tools. However, today’s lean teams rarely have the people to easily maintain such tasks. Whether it’s missed data or manual error in data entry, the limitations of manually tracking OEE still limit the ability to achieve operational excellence.
Software to the rescue
Today’s most effective teams are navigating this challenge by automating both data collection and analysis to ensure consistent, accurate, fast operational insights. Plant analytics software, like Emerson’s Movicon.NExT™ and Pro.Lean™ not only automatically collect manufacturing data, but they also perform complex calculations and provide visualizations to intuitively turn data into actionable information.
“The software automatically calculates OEE and related KPIs by continuously gathering data across the plant floor, presenting a full view of the production process across user-friendly dashboards. Software-generated reports break down OEE metrics by batch, shift, or other criteria. This makes it easy for operators of varying skill levels to monitor and control production processes and teams across departments to view KPIs and OEE metrics, downtime analysis, and reporting analytics as needed.”
Armed with visibility into their OEE, teams can begin the process of change necessary to improve operations. It all starts with benchmarking. No team can know where it needs to go until it has identified a starting point. Consistent, reliable measurement of OEE empowers teams to track metrics for an established period to determine the current state of existing production processes. From there, they can compare against expected benchmarks and identify and prioritize areas of loss. First and foremost, this helps teams know where to start in order to gain the best return on investment from their projects. However, it has other benefits as well,
“With accurate comparison, teams can clearly demonstrate project value to corporate leadership and other stakeholders and gain buy-in when it’s time to scale up.”
Taking action
A clear baseline and continuous data delivery and analysis makes it easy for manufacturers to start addressing challenges. If the team is facing regular slowdowns, unexpected outages, or even overall reduced speed of operations, they can explore performance KPIs such as production throughput, cycle time, and machine speed.
Or a team might identify quality issues forcing waste and rework. These operators might explore defect rate analysis or track rework and scrap cost. Similarly, they might examine availability, to explore how often critical equipment is offline. Doing so often identifies “bad actor” equipment that regularly causes outages—a perfect candidate for preventive and predictive maintenance.
High OEE is essential
Trying to navigate competition and drive every bit of performance will always be a challenge. Global market competition and workforce shortages are unlikely to make those challenges easier to navigate in coming years. As a result, proactive teams are exploring the software technology that drives improved performance and operational excellence, helping them capture improved visibility and optimal control to unleash opportunity and drive competitive advantage for years to come.
