How to Improve OEE
In this article, we’ll discuss ways you can improve OEE and make your shop floor more productive. But first, let’s discuss some basics.
What is OEE? OEE is an acronym that stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is the gold benchmark for measuring the efficiency of equipment in the manufacturing field.
OEE recognizes the percentage of the ultimate productive manufacturing time.
A 100% OEE score means that the production is perfect. This indicates manufacture of only good parts, as quick as possible, and with no downsides.
As a benchmark, OEE allows the comparison of the performance of production assets to;
- Industry criteria
- Similar in-company production assets
- Outcomes from a different team managing on the same asset
When used as a baseline, OEE tracks progress over a while to improve strategies.
How To Calculate OEE
Companies calculate OEE to gain insightful information and a clear picture of how the effectiveness of the various equipment. Here are some essential metrics included in the calculation of OEE.
● Availability: You calculate this by dividing operation time by production time.
● Performance: The perfect time it takes to produce each asset. (Operating time/total assets).
● Quality: Achieved by diving the number of good products by the total number of products manufactured.
OEE = Availability * Performance *Quality
Managers can make crucial decisions to maximize and maintain efficiency while saving time and money. For this reason, it is vital to understand how to improve OEE.
1. Prioritize The Manufacturing Machines
The first step to improving OEE is to focus its assessment on the machines used in production. The devices that would cause the entire to shut down if they malfunction. Improving OEE performance on these machines would most likely have a ripple effect of improvement to the other machines.
2. Connect High Priority Machines to The Industry Internet of Things (IIOT)
The history of the function and efficiency of machines is handy data when it comes to improving OEE. To enhance the collection of machine data, you can connect the high-priority devices to the detectors on the Industry Internet of Things (IIOT).
This allows the gathering of live information that shows real-time OEE performance. When you have real-time data, you can easily spot issues that hamper 100% OEE and improve them. This process is also commonly identified as real-time machine condition monitoring.
3. Realize What Makes Up OEE
You cannot improve what you do not understand. In the process of enhancing OEE, you need to understand its values. They include the availability of the machine, output performance, and the quality of the output. These values take up varied forms depending on other factors such as the type of business.
You should be aware of the implication of the elimination of any OEE value on your business. This helps in determining if the process affects the output and whether OEE can enhance it.
4. Enhance The OEE Formula
It is essential to recognize that various production companies interpret OEE differently. They might have different meanings depending on the machines or production methods in their performances.
Quality could be an important metric for some companies, while output performance would not be necessarily crucial. Depending on how your company creates value for your clients, you can optimize the OEE formula to suit the business.
5. Carry Out Well-Informed Maintenance
When you can receive real-time OEE performance on the business-critical machines, you can improve OEE by modifying the maintenance process. The maintenance department can act on any live information they receive that affects OEE value. This improves OEE, and the management team can generate more lucrative returns.
6. Improve Asset Environments
This goes without saying that environmental conditions will affect the production machines. Dust, temperatures, moisture, light levels, fumes are some of the ecological conditions that could impact your production assets or the production machinery. The real-time monitoring from IIOT can help in tracking any changes in the machine conditions. As a result, it improves OEE.
7. Incorporate OEE and Machine Condition Monitoring in Your Business Strategies
You can enhance your business strategies and processes by incorporating OEE and smart maintenance. This way, your business processes become of more value to the company’s success. In the same breath, this combination can help with the question of how to improve OEE?
Increased effective planning, more accurate demand forecasting, and higher quality end products can significantly improve OEE.
Conclusion
The takeaway is that keeping track and improving OEE can enable your company to become more time-efficient and save some money. Familiarize yourself with the various ways to strengthen OEE as outlined above. Analyzing and enhancing OEE involves obtaining real-time information and making changes based on this data.
Freedom’s software has helped hundreds of manufacturers across the country improve their OEE with our renowned OEE monitoring software that enables real-time analytics, eLog, shift reports, eScore, push notifications, and many more useful features.
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