Putting the Wowee into OEE

Sorry for the title of the blog. I’ll also apologise right now for promoting something that I have a direct interest in – but I’m quite excited about it.

I’ve been around manufacturing industry for quite some time now (in fact my very first job, at 17, was running a Heidelberg 2 colour printing press) and I’ve seen a lot of companies in recent years launch OEE projects.

OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness – which, in real long hand, is measuring and improving the use of your production machinery. Basically, your business has probably invested a great deal of money in an asset and OEE is a measure of how well the asset is being used taking into account elements such as set up time, downtime, waste and some other measures.

 A common problem is often getting the base measurements correct - it actually takes a great deal of effort that can sometimes take the initial enthusiasm out of an OEE project. One of the major stumbling blocks to quality data collection is the reliance on machine operators accurately recording time spent on each job. Getting them to log the set up time, run time, downtime, planned and unplanned, whilst trying to keep a machine running is very tough. Yet the figures are important otherwise the OEE improvement activities may be focussed in the wrong area. Too often I have seen handwritten sheets, often completed at the end of the day, or worse the end of the week, that absolutely invalidate all the effort put into the OEE project.

The answer is to make the collection of data as easy as possible and in real time. This will give you an insight to what can be called ‘machine truth’. Get this, and you can concentrate on improving OEE rather than how to measure it.

 It’s also important not to make the project too IT focussed, again valuable time can be consumed and momentum lost whilst waiting for a solution to be delivered.

 I apologised in the first paragraph for overt promotion (but you don’t have to click through on the link!) but I’m really impressed with a solution we have partnered with called Plantnode from Shoplogix.  I’d urge you to take a look – hey, you can also play with our virtual bottling machine while you are at it. Have fun.