15 steps to a successful OEE programme

An OEE programme tracks the value-added productivity of equipment and drives the plant to higher efficiency and quality at the lowest cost, giving responsible managers the clearest understanding of where improvements can be made in the process. Studies reveal that, on average, plants waste up to 40% of their capacity through shutdowns, speed losses, interruptions and defects. 

Despite investments in manufacturing planning and control systems, most have a poor overall performance rate, because plant managers often do not know the true performance of the factory and may not be sure how to improve it.

So, implementing an OEE programme allows them to measure factory performance by counting good (shipped) units produced compared to the quantity set against the scheduled time and equipment rate specified. This is an important tool in any capital intensive business.

In developing an OEE programme, it can be understood that how to prioritise production stops in factories to improve OEEThe aim is to provide a rapid approach, in turn, to select the right tools to ensure that all opportunities for improvement are taken into account within the programme and that no phase of the process is left out.

This caveat is because many companies focus on downtime losses as a measure of equipment performance, ignoring that there are other forms of losses within manufacturing lines. Below, we will describe how a successful OEE programme can be developed in just 15 steps:

1. Identify the project team in which the person responsible for each department involved in the operation of the plant should participate, because there is no one better to make known the weaknesses and strengths that exist in the process.
2. Communicate the objectives of the OEE programme to all team members.
3. Establish the current level of the team's overall effectiveness.
4. Validate existing data such as good units produced, failure rates, breakdowns, etc. to measure overall process performance.
5. Conduct activity analysis and identify bottlenecks.
6. Evaluate working methods and staffing for production compliance with safety and quality standards.
7. Analyse the planning and execution of maintenance according to schedule.
8. Benchmark existing performance against industry "best practice" on an annual basis.
9. Identify and quantify opportunities for an OEE programme.
10. Define the target performance for the overall effectiveness of the team.
11. Identify the actions and resources required for the development of a good OEE programme.
12. Develop an implementation plan with specific quality milestones.
13. Communicate the plan to all staff and set up project boards.
14. Establish a regular process for measuring and reviewing the OEE programme.
15. Identify the mechanisms that will underpin improvements following the implementation of the OEE programme.

Potential benefits of implementing an OEE programme for industry

• Reduced downtime costs, as machine malfunctions can be detected in time and operations can be stopped, as well as the impact on delivery commitments to the customer.
• An OEE programme enables predictive maintenance to drastically reduce repair costs, because as the historical database of downtime reasons grows, the maintenance department can discern trends to predict impending failure. 

In addition, by linking the OEE programme to a computerised maintenance management system, the maintenance department can take proactive measures to perform predictive and preventive maintenance. increasing the efficiency of food and beverage facilities.

• An OEE programme helps not only in capturing downtime reasons, but also shows capacity loss and cycle time data. With this information, management can better judge staff allocation and gain greater labour efficiencies.
• Total equipment effectiveness measures obtain the total number of parts produced, the amount of scrap and defects, and the reason for defects, allowing production managers to identify root causes to eliminate the additional costs associated with rework and scrap. 
• With reduced machine downtime, increased operator productivity and reduced defect capacity, higher production levels can be achieved with the same amount of resources.

Example of how a food and beverage factory reduced downtime by implementing an OEE programme.

In a food manufacturing plant, an OEE programme was implemented that helped supervisors detect that operators on a particular production line were deliberately and prematurely slowing down the machine to create bottlenecks and prevent the machine from slowing down automatically. The machine tended to fail to fill the surge bins whenever downstream machines were delayed.

If the design configurations had been maintained, the machine generating the bottleneck would have operated at nominal speed until the buffer zones of the surge container were filled with stock and prevented downstream machines from changing the process parameters. 

With OEE software, management was able to detect manipulated setups, view production conditions and understand what was happening in the process. Today, there are a number of software tools for capturing manufacturing performance data and displaying OEE graphically that are used in food industries. 

If you want to find out about all suitable OEE software tools, we invite you to subscribe to the Technology for Industry NewsletterThe most comprehensive newsletter on new industrial technologies, innovations in manufacturing, equipment and trends in automation.