OEE White Paper

Page 1

OEE - A Perfectly Imperfect World? Manufacturers invest time and effort in continuous improvement. This usually focuses upon operations, where the reality of everyday events is all too clear. The popular tool that is used, once early day successes have been obtained, is OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency). Benchmark figures are obtained and improvements made that are measured as improvement in OEE. Even though it is accepted that OEE is a measure rather than an absolute target, it is nevertheless good to achieve the fabled 85% which represents ‘world class’, but does the story end there, or are manufacturers measuring an imperfect world? OEE is a good measure and where acquired automatically with automatic reporting can produce valuable insight into many issues that occur in operations, both day to day and over the longer term. However, the business will not be measured externally by OEE. Externally, the business will be measured by OTDiF (On time delivery in full), which is, given quality to specification, a prime factor in customer satisfaction. OTDiF will be assisted by high OEE as will schedule adherence, but would further improvements be made if attention was made to the disparity between the scheduler’s ‘perfect’ world and the reality of operations? A manufacturing paradox It is theoretically possible to have high OEE and very low schedule adherence, as OEE has no component to measure ‘are we making the correct product today?’. Making the correct product meaning according to the schedule, which, if isolated from operational realities, will be closer to a theoretical wish list rather than what

can be manufactured today, given today’s constraints. Constraints include absence from work by key operational staff, equipment breakdown, ‘hard to make’ products, difficult changeovers, tooling shortages, raw material shortages and many other issues that are the imperfect domain of operations. Integration of scheduling and operations by data driven technology can produce a seamless regime where the realities of operations will become known to the scheduler who can then adapt, and even optimise, to those realities. Equally it will be possible for operations to ‘see forward’ into the future schedule and to make preparations.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.