Why OEE?
At EmsPT we believe it is essential that a company has started a continuous improvement program using OEE in a manual deployment, but this can only take you so far. It allows you to introduce and develop your culture for Lean Manufacturing and Continuous Improvement as it is essential that the whole organisation believes in and supports the programmes.
The curve below illustrates the benefits that can be made in the early days from manual systems but you eventually need more information, have the ability to find hidden losses, understand your performance losses, drive changeover through operational engagement and interaction and ultimately “Live the Shift” and deal with manufacturing issues in the shift. As one production manager said to us “There is no excuse for a bad shift”.
Why OEE adds further benefits when it is automated and in real time.
It is a simple calculation but of little use if you are unable to understand and see the detail behind the numbers:
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How does it vary per shift
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How do different products affect the OEE
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How do bottle necks effect other machines
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When chasing production output how does this effect product quality
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Does chasing OEE in the shift effect your schedule adherence
If we look further into the KPI it is often seen as engineering or maintenance tool and a technical challenge but it really has a benefit to all parts of the organisation.
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Planning; do they really know how different products run on which machines, how long a changeover really takes? When a line stops what is the impact on the schedule?
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Finance: When we discuss the benefits of OEE with a financial director they often tell us that they don’t really understand the true cost to manufacture a particular item as they are unable to see the detail; real cycle times, labour utilisation, rework.
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Engineering: When first starting with OEE the “low hanging fruit” can be identified and removed. What we find is that the major plan stoppages are recorded on a daily manual stoppage sheet. Yes, a failed Drive caused a problem in the shift but solving that problem is not going to drive up your OEE. Manual OEE systems lose the minor stoppages in the performance figure and you aren’t able to identify them and resolve the issues. Operators will have probably lived with them for years and simply accept them as a standard practise. We find that these issues usually represent a 15% OEE improvement that go unidentified in manual systems.
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Quality: The The OEE CalculationOEE calculation has an individual quality component. But does this allow you to see the amount of rework in the process. We also find that when a production facility is capacity constrained the tendency can be to try and ramp up the speed, “Performance” of the equipment which usually effects product quality. In this situation we need to understand how process control variable effect product quality?