Author: ary

OEE Productivity

Overall Equipment Effectiveness enables the measuring of the efficiency of a machine or that of a whole production facility. OEE can have a significant impact towards the productivity of a production system.  Deployment of software systems invariably improves the OEE score by more than 10% in as little as the first year.  It has been shown that optimising the OEE of only one percent enables a significant improvement in the production throughput and resultant decrease in the unit cost of the produced items.

The Overall Equipment Effectiveness score is derived from three elements: Availability (A), Performance (P) and Quality (Q).

  • Availability is the % of uptime of each manufacturing or plant asset
  • Performance is the % throughput against a target
  • Quality is the % of waste.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness = A x P x Q.

Producitivity through Overall Equipment Effectiveness in Use

Overall Equipment Effectiveness is valuable as a metric for directors of manufacturing.  Whist the principles of the formula are simple, it can be {extremely, highly} complicated to calculate in practice.  Hence, sophisticated OEE software are required to record the data from each element of the manufacturing process and make the OEE calculation speedily.  It is important these systems are of a modular structure to give it maximum flexibility and allow it to fit with existing plant and data capture facilities and ERP system.

Once the data has been acquired and analysed, it is only of benefit once converted into reports that are reliable.  OEE software from the main vendors gives a selection of reports that can be adapted and analyzed to enable the viewer to find what he is looking for.

OEE is becoming as the foundation of lean manufacturing. via incremental improvements a production line can save fuel, improve efficiency and decrease departmental silo-mentality as well as manage risk.  All production managers must comprehend the details of OEE and how it fits into the lean manufacturing framework as a essential force for productivity profitable manufacturing.