OEE Software Earns Its Investment
OEE measures the efficiency of a piece of equipment or that of a whole production facility. OEE can have a significant impact towards the productivity of a manufacturing unit. Use of OEE systems invariably changes the OEE score by up to 20% over the first year. It has been demonstrated that making incremental changes to the OEE of only one percent results in a significant variation in the production capacity and resultant decrease in the unit cost of the produced items.
The Overall Equipment Effectiveness score derives from three functions: Availability, Performance and Quality. Availability equals the percentage of uptime of each manufacturing or plant asset. Performance equals the percentage throughput compared with the target set for it. Quality equals the percentage of scrap. To get the OEE score, multiply Availability by Performance by Quality.
OEE is worthwhile as a key performance indicator for factory supervisors. Whist the principles of the formula are straight forward, it can be extremely, highly laborious to calculate in in a working factory. For this reason, specialist OEE software are normally used to record the data from each part of the plant and make the OEE calculation quickly. 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.
After the data has been acquired and processed, it is only of benefit if it can be converted into reports that are accurate. OEE software from the industry suppliers provides a range of report formats abel to be configured and analyzed to enable the viewer to discover what he is trying to improve.
OEE has shown itself as the corner stone of lean manufacturing. By continuous improvements a production line can reduce its carbon footprint, improve productivity and reduce management finger-pointing as well as uncover and control risk. All aspects of manufacturing must understand the principles and practice of Overall Equipment Effectiveness and how it relates to the lean manufacturing principles as a key force for productivity in the future.