Education

Lean tools to cut waste Overall Equipment Effectiveness

OEE is a "best practices" way to monitor and improve the effectiveness of your manufacturing processes (i.e. machines, manufacturing cells, assembly lines). OEE is simple and practical. It takes the most common and important sources of manufacturing productivity loss, places them into three primary categories and distills them into metrics that provide an excellent gauge for measuring where you are - and how you can improve!

DMA Kulasooriya

OEE is an abbreviation for the manufacturing metric Overall Equipment Effectiveness. OEE takes into account the various sub components of the business process - Availability, Performance and Quality. After the various factors are taken into account the result is expressed as a percentage.

This percentage can be viewed as a snapshot of the current production efficiency for a machine, line or cell. Manufacturing a product is a complex process. Without metrics and guidelines it is very easy to lose control and have your business managed by your production. OEE is a tool that combines multiple manufacturing issues and data points to provide information about the process.

By analyzing and calculating data it also functions as a framework for root cause analysis. Through a documented process of combining the underlying data OEE provides specific process information.

All members of the manufacturing team, from assembly technicians to financial personnel can use the data to understand the current state of the manufacturing process. By having a predetermined framework of the impact of machine availability, performance and quality, OEE provides a framework to track underlying issues and root causes.

OEE also provides a framework for improvements in the manufacturing process. By using key OEE concepts such as The Six Big Losses waste exposed by tracking OEE can be understood and efficiencies can be improved.

The components of this framework are:

  • OEE
  • Availability
  • Performance
  • Quality

OEE is a very simple metric to immediately indicate the current status of a manufacturing process and also a complex tool allowing you to understand the effect of the various issues in the manufacturing process and how they affect the entire process.

OEE= Availability x Performance x Quality
Availability refers to the machine or cell being available for production when scheduled. At the most basic level, when a process is running it is creating value for the end user.

When a process is stopped, it's creating a cost with no associated value. Whether it's due to mechanical failure, raw materials or operator issues, the cell or machine is either producing or not producing. By comparing scheduled run time to actual run time, the availability component of OEE allows for a determination of lost production due to down time.

Performance is determined by how much waste is created through running at less than optimal speed.
By comparing the actual cycle times against ideal cycle times, OEE allows for a determination of how much production was lost by cycles that did not meet the ideal cycle time.

Quality focuses on identifying time that was wasted by producing a product that does not meet quality standards.

Top to the page  |  E-mail  |  views[1]
SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
 
Other Education Articles
New Zealand: Exploring vistas in Higher Education
Sulochana makes her country proud
Join Imperial College for CIMA Certificate Level
My memories of ‘WYCHERLEY’
Welcome to NASA… your professional partner in Higher Education
Transforming A/L disappointment into success with Monash College
Successful employment through university education
Lean tools to cut waste Overall Equipment Effectiveness
Importance of Customer Care as a cultural imperative
Tiara offers study in Singapore with a quality hospitality school
Microsoft recognizes Net Assist with Best Learning Solutions Partner Winner
After A/Ls become a qualified Quantity Surveyor
New government and Australian migration
3WGE University Application Day
Photographic Society of Sri Lanka continues its mission
ACHE ties up with Guangzhou Civil Aviation College, China
ESOFT - Sri Lanka's only Accredited course provider for BCS
AOD designers make Sri Lanka proud at Italian Fashion Show
Holmesglen: A leader in Vocational Education

 

 
Reproduction of articles permitted when used without any alterations to contents and a link to the source page.
© Copyright 2010 | Wijeya Newspapers Ltd.Colombo. Sri Lanka. All Rights Reserved.| Site best viewed in IE ver 6.0 @ 1024 x 768 resolution