Are you getting the most out of your equipment? Using OEE to identify improvement areas

[As published on LinkedIn Page, June 2022]

One of the easiest ways to get the most value from one's assets is tracking a parameter called Overall Equipment Effectiveness (#OEE).

This parameter tracks the losses from;
- #Availability
- #Performance
-and Quality.

Availability losses are caused by equipment breakdowns, services and regular adjustments that have to be carried out during operation. Availability can be further tracked by;
- #Maintainability: how easy is it to recover from breakdowns
- #Reliability: how resilient is the equipment from failure
Interventions to improve availability are mostly tackled by eliminating the root causes of the failure by methods such as Root Cause Analysis (#RCA). Another approach is also to ensure services are effective by doing Reliability Centered Maintenance (#RCM).

Performance speaks to the speed of equipment to do work. Issues that influence can be natural deterioration of the machine and adjustments that slow down performance. It is not easy to detect this deterioration with time unless it is being intentionally tracked. Another issue to keep an eye on is the operator skills. A good data system that tracks individual operator performance is not only good for fair performance evaluation but can also highlight who needs to be retrained or coached. It can also highlight improvement areas in the training offered.

Finally, quality speaks to how much of the production has reached the required standard. In manufacturing for example, the number of products rejected as a portion of all products made is a good indicator of quality. In a service operation, the service rating can be used to also assess the quality. Quality can be improved by tools such as #SixSigma and increasing monitoring points within the process.

We help you develop a good #dataanalytics program that will easily highlight improvement areas. The idea is to bring in #continousimprovement in a methodical way. Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a powerful measure when it is broken down by its parts to reveal priority improvement areas. Prioritize. Measure. Do Something.

OEE=Availability x Performance x Quality but don't trend this in isolation.
#maintenance #assetmanagement