Understanding your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) score is critical in the manufacturing industry.
It’s a barometer for measuring the efficiency and productivity of your operations. But, interpreting the numbers can be more nuanced than it looks.
POET Systems will guide you through what OEE scores mean and how you can use this information to boost your manufacturing process.
Understanding OEE Components
Availability
Availability is your production time without any downtime. It measures how often your equipment is ready to produce when it’s supposed to. For example, your availability percentage decreases if your machine is down for an hour during an eight-hour shift.
Performance
Performance gauges whether your manufacturing process is running as fast as it should be. If a machine can produce 100 units an hour but only churning out 80, you’re not performing at full capacity. This dip in speed impacts your overall OEE score.
Quality
This component considers the quality of the items being produced. If you have parts that don’t meet the standards and require rework or are scrapped, your quality score—and, consequently, your OEE—takes a hit.
Calculating Your OEE Score
Your Overall Equipment Effectiveness score is found by multiplying the Availability, Performance, and Quality percentages:
(Availability x Performance x Quality) = OEE
Let’s say your availability is 90%, performance is 95%, and quality is 99%. Your OEE would be:
(0.90 x 0.95 x 0.99) = 0.845 or 84.5%
That’s a solid score by many standards!
What Does Your OEE Score Mean?
Your OEE score gives insight into where you’re excelling and where there’s room for growth. A score of 85% or above is considered world-class, symbolising an efficient production process where equipment availability, performance, and quality are maximised.
For operations scoring between 60% and 85%, performance is solid yet indicates potential for further optimisation. This range suggests good functioning but highlights the importance of addressing inefficiencies to boost productivity and output quality.
Scores below 60% signals significant areas of concern, indicating major inefficiencies such as frequent downtime, slow production rates, or high defect rates. This highlights an urgent need for operational review, focusing on maintenance, training, and quality control to improve performance.
Aiming for a 100% OEE score is unrealistic, as it would imply no downtime, perfect speed, and zero defects, an almost impossible feat in the dynamic manufacturing environment. Instead, the goal should be continuous improvement.
Understanding and acting upon your OEE score can help you make incremental improvements in availability, performance, and quality, leading to better productivity and profitability.
At POET Systems, we can help you to understand your OEE score and aid you in implementing OEE software to improve your score. Contact us today to find out more.
Tips for Improving Your OEE Score
Improving your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) score is a multi-faceted approach that involves enhancing each of the core components: Availability, Performance, and Quality.
Incremental improvements in these areas can significantly elevate your manufacturing efficiency and productivity.
Enhancing Availability
Availability measures the amount of time that equipment is ready to produce as opposed to when it is unavailable due to setups, breakdowns, or adjustments.
To boost this aspect:
- Implement Regular Maintenance: Scheduled and preventive maintenance helps avoid unexpected machine breakdowns and extend the lifecycle of machinery. This proactive approach ensures machines are in optimal working condition and available when needed.
- Utilise Predictive Maintenance Technologies: Implementing advanced technologies such as IoT sensors can help predict equipment failures before they occur, thus reducing unplanned downtime.
- Streamline Changeover Procedures: Reducing the time it takes to switch from the production of one product to another can significantly increase machine availability.
Improving Performance
Performance looks at how well your machines are running when they are available. It focuses on machine speed and operating efficiency.
- Staff Training: Educate and train your operators to handle machinery optimally. Well-trained staff can operate machinery at peak efficiency, detect issues early, and adjust processes as needed.
- Optimise Production Processes: Review and streamline your production workflows to eliminate any non-value-adding processes which slow down production speed.
- Implement Lean Manufacturing Principles: Using techniques like Six Sigma can help identify and eliminate wasteful practices, thus optimising performance.
Improving Quality
Quality focuses on manufacturing products that meet the required standards without defects.
- Improve Quality Control Processes: Regular inspection and testing at different stages of the production process can help detect defects early and prevent the wastage of materials and resources. This is particularly important in the discovery phases when you have not yet understood all your root causes for quality issues.
- Engage in Root Cause Analysis: When defects occur, it’s important to perform a root cause analysis to identify how the issue happened and implement improvements to prevent recurrence. This involves going beyond treating symptoms and addressing the underlying issues.
- Standardise Work Practices: Ensuring that all operators follow standardised work methods can reduce variability, which is often a significant cause of quality issues. Ensuring there is an agreed ‘best practice’ that all staff work together on creating, and working to is important. Allowing continual development of the best practice keeps staff engaged and allows them to input into potential improvements.
Continuous Monitoring and Feedback
Lastly, continuous monitoring of these improvements is vital. Using OEE software can provide real-time data and analytics to see how changes impact your score.
Regular feedback sessions with your team can also foster a culture of continuous improvement, where every piece of feedback is an opportunity for further optimisation.
By focusing on these targeted strategies to improve Availability, Performance, and Quality, you can gradually enhance your OEE score, leading to more effective resource utilisation, reduced waste, and greater output, thereby driving overall operational success.
Common Pitfalls in Interpreting OEE
Interpreting Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) scores requires careful consideration to avoid common mistakes.
Direct comparisons of OEE scores across different machinery or industries can be misleading due to varying operational norms. The production type and the machinery’s age also significantly influence OEE outcomes.
Aiming for a perfect 100% OEE is unrealistic; focusing on achievable improvements and analysing the separate components of OEE—Availability, Performance, and Quality—offers more valuable insights.
Reliable and timely data collection is essential for accurate OEE calculation and understanding that a single OEE figure is a snapshot in time helps. Tracking long-term OEE trends provide a clearer picture of overall efficiency. Steering clear of these pitfalls is crucial for effectively utilising OEE scores to drive manufacturing improvements.
Talk OEE With POET Systems
Your OEE score is more than just a number—it’s a snapshot of your manufacturing process’s health.
Use it wisely, not as a sole indicator of success but as a tool for continuous improvement. Don’t get disheartened by lower scores; they’re just starting points on your journey to operational excellence.
Contact POET Systems today to find out more about OEE and how our OEE software can optimise your processes.
