The targeted management of equipment productivity is moving further into the foreground in the order of priorities of companies. The relocation of manufacturing to Europe, rising energy costs and the ever-decreasing availability of employees motivates managers to use the available resources in the best possible way. But how can you develop? What is the benchmark in OEE management against which you have to be measured? This article provides information.
Effective OEE management begins with an old saying: “What gets measured gets done.” The origin of this statement probably goes back to Rheticus in the 15th century, and the original statement is more like “if you can measure it, you can you manage it.”
Regardless of source or formulation, the message is clear: measuring produces the information needed to ensure you are achieving what you set out to do. This is the initial step on the way to the OEE management benchmark: Automatically measure whether the system has run every single minute at the intended speed (run according to the shift schedule, speed according to the default time) at which it should run. With the current state of the art in technology, this is easily possible via a connection to the PLC of the equipment.
Step two is then to obtain justifications for the minutes that were lost or in which the system ran too slowly or produced rejects (loss of availability, performance and quality). These can either come from the PLC or be entered by the system operator on a display or terminal.
In step three, the data is visualized in real time and close to the equipment on a large display. This creates responsibility among the employees and offers executives a good starting point for a spontaneous discussion about the productivity of the current shift.
From experience, the visualization and the associated transparency of the system effectiveness alone cause an OEE increase of 2-5%.
In morning shop floor management routines, the top three productivity losses of the past period are discussed and, if necessary, fed into the problem-solving process. This routine forms the formal bridge into management and is timely enough to retain memories of the specific circumstances of the loss.
Beyond the daily routine, trends are analyzed once a month and larger improvement projects are discussed.
In step five, the problems are processed and subsequently solved, usually with the support of industrial engineers.
These resolved issues will be reviewed for effectiveness in the “Act” phase of the PDCA. This is the sixth and final step in a professional OEE management process.
This is the modern benchmark process supported by Industry 4.0 technology for the continuous increase in equipment productivity, as the oee.ai team has in mind as the target state.
Feel free to contact us if you want to develop yourself in order to sustainably increase equipment productivity in your area of responsibility.