OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness): A Complete Guide

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What is OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

OEE, or overall equipment effectiveness, gauges a machine's output. It multiplies a machine's output quality and relative capacity by the performance of the machine. The outcome is a score for a certain scheduled run that is expressed as a percentage.

A measure of how effectively a manufacturer's operation is run is called overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). In other words, overall equipment effectiveness provides you with a consistent yardstick for monitoring progress while assisting you in identifying a problem in your operations, determining which percentage of production time is productive, and fixing it. Continuous improvement is the aim of your OEE measurement.

Benefits of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

If you are familiar with OEE software, you should be aware of the specific advantages it provides as well as the resources that enable you to take advantage of them.

Consistent Production Volume

Regardless of the sector that your company services, you are aware that productivity is ultimately the key to success. Your customers are depending on you to fulfill your promise to deliver all orders on time and in full, and you can only consistently achieve those requirements while also achieving your financial objectives.

By encouraging the visibility of your manufacturing processes and offering current performance information, OEE technology helps to optimise the likelihood that you'll be able to meet your production targets. You'll feel in charge of your operations from a high level down to the granular level with advanced analytics that indicates progress in great detail.

 

More Efficient Manufacturing Processes

It can be simple to become intently focused on some jobs or parts of operations while presuming that every other component of the entire is continuing to operate as intended given how busy the shop floor can get in manufacturing facilities. To make sure all of your lines are still providing you with the outcomes you want, you need to maintain a finger on the pulse of what's occurring with them.

An OEE platform can assist you in identifying what's working and what isn't in your processes so that you can aim for continual improvement. With the proper software on your side, you can spot potential problems as they arise and flag them, allowing your employees to take action to fix them.

Reduced Waste, Scrap and Rework

Finding out that a portion—or worse yet, the entire—of a run will have to be trashed owing to faults that were caused by flaws in the production process is one of the industrial industry's most painful situations. Such incidents not only interfere with your capacity to achieve your goals and necessitate time-consuming, expensive rework, but they also result in large financial losses due to the materials used without any chance of recovering your initial costs.

Your staff will be better equipped to address equipment or process issues to prevent scrap and reduce waste since an OEE system can assist you to identify where quality losses are happening in real-time. You'll have that visibility from a vendor that has a solution that is tailored to your needs.

Minimal Idling Time and Short Stops

No matter how brief, idle equipment and stoppage on your production lines can reduce operational effectiveness and cast doubt on your ability to meet plan objectives. Even more aggravating is having to rush team members as the minutes of downtime mount and you can't figure out what's causing the production to stop.

An effective OEE platform will provide you with the visibility into your production processes you need to quickly ascertain the causes of stoppages and how to prevent them in the future. Because you'll be able to foresee probable obstacles and find effective solutions to them, you'll be able to avoid losses that occur at startup and other crucial transitional times in the day's plan.

Greater Shop Floor Accountability

As crucial as your machinery is, the efficiency of your operations as a whole is largely dependent on your staff. While you undoubtedly have confidence in the highly qualified individuals that make up your crew, it pays to be aware of how well they perform their duties to determine the best ways to position them for future success.

By dividing performance by shift and crew, OEE solutions enable you to see which teams and periods are producing the desired outcomes and where your strategy needs to be strengthened. These platforms improve your team's capacity to work together by providing them with a single, integrated dashboard that serves as a "single source of truth" for information about the day's plans and existing problems.

 

How to Calculate Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
 

There are two main ways to calculate OEE:

Simple Calculation: The ratio of total productive time to planned production time is the simplest formula for calculating OEE. OEE = (Good Count x Ideal Cycle Time) / Planned Production Time.
 

Preferred Calculation: The formula for Overall Equipment Effectiveness

OEE = Availability * Quality * Performance

• Availability is the measured percentage of a machine's uptime during the planned production run. Availability = Uptime / Scheduled Run Time

• Quality is the ratio of the total number of units produced during a scheduled run time to the number of units produced during that run period that fulfill quality control standards and are defect-free. Quality = Acceptable Units / Total Units

• Performance is expressed as a ratio of the machine's throughput to its actual capacity as a whole. Performance = Throughput / Ideal cycle time.

How Can Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) Improve Maintenance?

A few reasonably easy modifications to the production process can be made to raise your OEE. These are a few of the most significant alterations that can be performed.

Use Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs):

Using variable frequency drives (VFDs) rather than conventional motor starters is one technique to increase OEE. There are two distinct methods for turning on a motor. Normal motor starters don't raise motor speeds gradually. It is sudden and ineffective instead. On the other hand, VFDs do increase the motor speed gradually. Due to the lack of wear and tear, this is more efficient and enables the motors to last longer than starter-powered motors. Moreover, VFDs reduce the stress placed on the motor's bearings and itself, extending its lifespan. By reducing the frequency and cost of maintenance, the increased efficiency and savings will increase OEE.

Use Electric Actuators: 

Using electric actuators rather than hydraulic or pneumatic ones is another technique to increase OEE. Actuators are a class of motors that use energy to move objects. Hoses and pumps need to be frequently checked and maintained when employing hydraulic or pneumatic actuators. Time and money are needed for this. On the other hand, since electronic actuators lack pumps and hoses, maintenance is significantly less of a hassle. Electric actuators not only save money and time but also provide the motor with more control over its acceleration and velocity, which will eventually increase the motor's lifespan.

 

Spot Problems with Machine Vision:

OEE can be raised by using machine vision to identify any manufacturing issues that might arise. Machine vision is a mechanical, image-based method of inspecting various manufacturing process components to make sure everything is operating as it should. Vision sensors are used in this process to check that the right procedures are being followed and to detect any flaws. You can reduce waste and create a product of greater quality by employing machine vision.

Maintain Preventative Measures: 

Maintaining preventative steps to reduce equipment faults and address these issues before they become more expensive is a fairly straightforward and more broad method to increasing OEE. One approach to achieve this is to ask the suppliers of your components for information on service life, and then request inspections of the equipment based on that information.

Perform Regular Maintenance: 

Encourage machine operators to perform regular or routine maintenance as another general, easy, but equally efficient strategy to increase OEE. When a piece of equipment is in good operating order, it should be maintained. This implies, for instance, that spare parts must constantly be accessible to ensure that machine operators can readily keep up with maintenance tasks.

Conclusion

It makes sense to monitor and enhance OEE for the apparent benefits of being more time and cost-effective. The five basic methods mentioned above show that there are numerous ways to accomplish this. Real-time data must be collected to assess and enhance OEE, and adjustments must be made in response to this data.