OEE is the go-to tool for companies because it helps them collect and measure maintenance and production data. Learn how you can improve this key metric.
OEE, commonly known as overall equipment effectiveness, is a vital metric that large-scale companies use to measure productivity and evaluate them. Several lean manufacturing companies widely use it to evaluate and gauge productivity. Knowing the baseline overall equipment effectiveness also helps establish the KPIs (key performance indicators) and focus on the areas of improvement to bring out the real potential.
However, it can be a challenging and sizable task for maintenance teams. So, when they have gathered data from multiple production lines and machines, it becomes overwhelming to make sense of it to ensure machine production and maintenance are on point. Improving OEE is critical for companies to achieve manufacturing excellence, and the following are some ways to do so.
What is OEE?
OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a key performance indicator that compares an equipment’s potential performance to its actual performance. In other words, it is a quantifiable way to find out how effectively equipment, people, and processes are operating. OEE uses availability, performance, and quality to calculate the percentage of good production time on an asset.
How to improve OEE?
1. Improve Collaboration
OEE is a battle-tested method of measuring the productivity levels for productions time. The OEE calculation categorizes the performance and effectiveness of the manufacturing processes and assets into three elements, including availability, quality, and performance. All three elements tie into a specific aspect of the process and help identify improvements. As a result, it helps understand why and where specific equipment breaks down, resulting in more efficient processes and downtime.
2. Set Realistic Objectives
Knowing the challenges and identifying objectives are vital to realistically measuring OEE. For this reason, it would make sense to assess the OEE potential and calculate it based on the design, current performance metrics, and equipment conditions. For example, most companies strive for an OEE of 85%, but it’s hard to achieve if your current average is 50%. For this reason, it is essential to set incremental goals and start working your way up to achieve the 85% gold standard. When it comes to the OEE benchmarks, they vary between different organizations, industries, and sources. However, the average ranges from 30% to 70%. Once you have information about the potential for improvement, you can set the performance benchmarks against different organizations to gain a competitive edge. Lastly, it’s important to set SMART goals.
3. Using Data to Improve OEE
For the most part, you could collect data from the OT and IT systems and put them on the KPI overview or dashboard for everyone to utilize the same data. Maintenance and asset managers will realize how enormous the task is. So, it’s better to connect different systems but make the most preferred choices (start with the most vital systems). Keep in mind that the data must be usable and organized and focus on the data that support the KPIs. In addition, before you implement the changes, you need to measure the outcome of the changes.
4. Start Prioritizing
Which assets are most critical for quality standards and performance as a business? What would happen if any of the assets had unplanned or unforeseen downtime? Businesses need to prioritize 20% to 30% of the assets as performance and production depend on them. For this purpose, there are multiple ways of prioritizing the assets depending on the production. It’s vital to focus on critical assets and optimize maintenance and performance activities. To summarize, button down the loop, keep track of the performance and enhance the maintenance system according to the feedback and maintenance team’s comments.
5. Boost Preventive Maintenance
Preventing the failure of assets is essential, and a maintenance program promises a longer lifespan and ensures seamless asset availability as it improves the performance rate. In addition, it reduces the risk of equipment defects, downtime, and failure. For this purpose, you can opt for TPM (total productive maintenance) and RCM (reliability-centered maintenance). However, you cannot indulge in them with a blind eye. Starting with the most effective maintenance programs is vital based on external providers’ ability, knowledge, and OEM recommendations. Consider using RCM methodologies to analyze and optimize the maintenance process and look for more intelligent ways of applying the results. Moreover, start tracking the availability of improvement points, especially those that can impact the manufacturing processes and productivity.
Conclusion
Leveraging the right tools and technologies are critical for companies to improve production efficiency and increase profitability. Successful maintenance and manufacturing teams continually look for best practices to reduce waste while maximizing output with available resources. OEE is the go-to tool for companies because it helps them collect and measure valuable maintenance and production data. It also serves as a tool to continually identify areas of improvement.