Performance Management Series: Increasing Overall Equipment Effectiveness For Your Manufacturing Facility

This series aims to help manufacturers enhance overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) management, boost production throughput, elevate manufacturing service levels, and better monitor production processes and equipment performance to prevent falling behind on delivery dates despite investing in new machines.

You could be spending millions on new machines but falling behind on delivery dates because you don't understand your true capacity. We understand that the goal of manufacturers today is to do more with less; therefore, this series will help you to enhance OEE management, boost production throughput, elevate manufacturing service levels, and better monitor production processes and equipment performance.

The first topic we will share is increasing OEE for your business. OEE shows the percentage of time during manufacturing that is truly productive. A perfect OEE score of 100% indicates that you're producing only Good Parts, at maximum speed, without any downtime. OEE is closely tied with lean manufacturing and aids in the identification and analysis of machine efficiency and product quality.

The impact of OEE on your business' profitability and competitiveness

The impact of OEE extends to profitability and competitiveness. Through OEE metrics, wasteful elements can be accurately pinpointed and subsequently reduced. Productivity losses within the realm of OEE metrics are categorized based on their impact on availability, performance, or quality, providing insight into the machine or plant's value creation.

Not being able to manage planned and unplanned downtime can cost a manufacturer thousands of dollars a month. Measuring OEE can give you visibility into parts of the production process that are most critical to improve. Tasks such as changeovers, maintenance, and cleaning, while necessary, offer room for improvement.

Also, while purchasing best-in-class and a variety of machines is important to stay competitive, how much money are you wasting by purchasing another machine without your existing machines running at optimal speed and efficiency? When machines operate below their potential maximum throughput due to factors like age, maintenance, or material quality, losses occur. Establishing ideal running times, typically based on historical data, is crucial for improvement. Automated software solutions aid in identifying and rectifying reduced throughput.

OEE and quality

How much rework do you do regularly? For manufacturers, rework could be around 2% of revenue. Maximum quality entails products meeting customer requirements without rework. Quality losses are costly and include rejects and rework time. Aimed at achieving 100% quality, OEE focuses on minimizing these losses. Unstable operations leading to defective products until stabilization, particularly during startup or adjustments, result in yield reduction. On-going quality defects and non-conformances can also reduce OEE. Operator knowledge and automated digital solutions play vital roles in mitigating this loss. Post-production challenges like incorrect packaging or labeling contribute to production problems. Leveraging sensors and OEE software, these issues can be identified and addressed quickly, minimizing their occurrence. Machine monitoring software solutions aid improving your facility’s OEE. Accessing real-time data provides immediate insights into productivity levels. Instead of relying on delayed data, you can actively manage the collection of information within your organization. Leveraging the technological strides facilitated by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), you gain rapid access to production reports, OEE tracking, and historical data. Furthermore, these tools offer capabilities to interpret and analyze data autonomously. This empowers you to contextualize your data and utilize it for decision-making with greater speed than ever before.

Enhancing OEE for your business

After you have the above inputs in place, you can now focus on predictive maintenance. Predictive maintenance involves proactively identifying potential machine failures and addressing issues before they manifest. By integrating preventive maintenance strategies and machine monitoring systems, manufacturers can mitigate the need for unnecessary maintenance while ensuring continuous machine operation. This will be a continual learning process, constantly improving.

Enhancing OEE requires delving beyond the mere timing of stoppages to understand their underlying causes. While it's beneficial to track when and how frequently production halts occur, addressing the root causes of downtime is crucial for effective problem-solving. This approach enables the identification of patterns within production lines, machines, or operator practices that may go unnoticed solely by tracking stoppages.

Your machine monitoring solution, Alora

Alora can help you achieve your OEE target. OEE serves as a vital indicator of how effectively your manufacturing facility is utilized. A low OEE score typically signifies significant downtimes, inefficiencies, and increased waste within your production facilities. By thoroughly assessing overall equipment effectiveness and implementing actionable strategies for enhancement, you can cultivate a more productive working environment and achieve your output objectives.

Utilizing machine monitoring software represents one of the most effective means to analyze, evaluate, and address OEE improvement opportunities. Alora gives you actionable insights on an intuitive dashboard to easily see you more important machine metrics, thereby enhancing your machine and employee efficiency. Schedule a demo with us to learn more.