North America is becoming increasingly more popular for low-cost manufacturing, and as a result, the manufacturing industry is now more competitive than ever. One way manufacturers can gain a competitive edge is by improving productivity; effectively and efficiently. A company with higher efficiency and production quality can manufacture products for less, increase its profit margin, or enjoy a combination of the two. Measuring OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is one way to stay ahead of competitors because if you aren’t tracking OEE or downtime, you are losing money every job, every shift, every day.
What is OEE?
OEE is a factor used by production managers to evaluate performance and effectiveness of a process. That process can take place at a single workstation to a complete factory. OEE gathers several measurable metrics and computes them in a way it can be compared to other production lines, different shifts, or even by benchmark numbers against your industry’s average. If you are focused on lean manufacturing, OEE is a great key performance indicator (KPI).
Measuring OEE
OEE is calculated by multiplying each of these factors:
Availability x Performance x Quality
OEE breaks down the reasons for productivity losses into three main factors: Availability, Performance, and Quality.
- Availability: This OEE Metric represents the percentage of scheduled time that the operation is available to operate (uptime).
- Performance: This OEE Metric represents the operational speed (work center) as a percentage compared to its designed speed.
- Quality: This OEE Metric represents the number of Units produced as a percentage of Total United Started or First Pass Yield (FPY).
Two ways of Tracking OEE
Manually
Tracking production and downtime by hand relies heavily on your entire staff, particularly your line operators. As downtime events occur, staff must record the events and then later enter this information into spreadsheets, which then are presented to management for review. Problems can be discovered and resolved, but can take days, weeks, and even months to be fixed. Since this method is very dependent on your operators to accurately record problems, it is crucial that they are clear and concise when entering data because otherwise the tracking of this information will be useless.
Automated Solutions
Although it is possible to track OEE manually, it is far more efficient to automate OEE data collection, especially because manual collection is prone to operator error. Having an automated OEE solution gives you the ability to view all your data in real-time, so you always know your metrics are precise, instant, and accurate.
Many companies implement manual tracking because they want to save money. However, the amount saved by not implementing an automated system is lost by the cost of undiscovered and unresolved downtime.
Conclusion
If you are looking for ways to improve the efficiency of your production lines, then try measuring OEE. It is such a powerful metric that allows you to gain more control over your production facility since it allows you to examine the data of your production performance in real time. Gain control over your facility, increase its quality and performance, and get to world-class productivity with OEE.
Start measuring your OEE with ScorBox Automated Solutions.
