SIMPLIFYING OEE CALCULATION

SIMPLIFYING OEE CALCULATION

The Challenges of Calculating OEE

As important as it is to track OEE, manual processing and calculation of OEE data present challenges that often discourage the people who attempt to use OEE.

The Time and Effort of Processing Masses of Data

The OEE calculation takes a few minutes to figure. If you are tracking OEE for a ten-machine line running in three shifts, you need to make 30 calculations every day, 150 each week to get complete information about improvement and problem trends. This processing requires a time commitment that many companies find hard to keep up with.

Some companies handle the time issues by giving the data to an administrative department to process. This is unfortunate, since the resulting information doesn’t always get back to the place it can be used.

At its heart, OEE is a shop floor improvement tool, so it’s important to ensure quick feedback to the shop floor, to keep the focus on OEE.

Handing the processing to another department is not a good solution to the time problem. The most effective data collection and processing for OEE happens on the shop floor.

The Difficulty of Extracting Useful Long-Term Information

Although the OEE data seems very simple on its surface, extracting useful information from a series of calculations is quite labor intensive.

Many OEE users are not getting the improvement-guiding information they could be from the data they collect. To work around these difficulties, some managers, IT departments, and consultants try to develop their own spreadsheets. However, most homemade solutions are still time consuming to use. Furthermore, the information they generate is not always useful across the company due to a lack of standards for what data is used and how the data is processed.

Even when a spreadsheet works, it is usually not sophisticated enough to manipulate the data to expose latent problems. Most spread-sheets also offer little flexibility in terms of the type of equipment and output they track—or they turn into long lists of choices to sort through for each element tracked. Mistakes in data entry are easy to make but not easy to catch. Such spreadsheets tend to become just "one more tool" around the workplace—falling far short in supporting the improvements that should come from awareness of the equipment’s OEE.

A Software Tool That Supports Long-Term Improvement

The OEE Toolkit software was designed to streamline daily OEE tracking and address the challenges that keep people from using OEE and improving their equipment over the long term.

Flexibility and Ease of Use

The OEE Toolkit is a general tool with the built-in flexibility to cover the OEE tracking needs of nearly every type of manufacturing environment. Without needing to learn complicated programming, you can easily configure the software to define all the parameters you plan to measure, the way you intend to measure them.

Simple Daily Data Entry and Calculation

With the parameters entered into the software, daily calculation of the OEE rate is a simple matter of entering a few data elements into the pre-defined fields for the machine and product. Pull-down lists make it easy to set up data entry. The software promotes standardization and reduces errors, since only a little data is actually changed from day to day.

Minimal Input, Maximal Information

The OEE Toolkit software requires just a few pieces of data, which are easily recorded by the operators who work with the equipment. These simple data, kept over time, yield more than a daily snapshot of how the machine is running. The OEE Toolkit’s comprehensive reports, graphs, and charts give you a long-term analysis of trends, problem areas, and the effects of your improvement activities.

Standardized Output

The software is a standard tool that can be used in all parts of the plant to present equipment- related information in a uniform way. This supports company wide deployment of equipment improvement by providing effective comparisons and horizontal learning among different areas.

Practical, flexible, and easy to use, OEE Toolkit will boost any company wide improvement process by finding losses through standardized OEE calculation.

The History of the OEE Industry Standard

(By Arno Koch)

Working as a sr. Lean consultant I noticed two things over and over again;

1.     Operators, line managers and management all either want to compare equipment, or are afraid that this will be done.

2.     Setting up the definitions for gathering OEE data brings up the same discussions over and over again. Larger companies all seam to struggle -most political- fights about how OEE is defined, one wants to include PM, the other takes it out, and the third takes it out under conditions... thus giving fear on the shop floor that 'unfair comparisons' are done.

Ad 1. Although I feel OEE is a shop floor tool, not meant to benchmark, it is certainly possible to use certain elements as useful reference information considering it is done in the right way.

Ad 2. For every problem there is only one optimal solution. So why discover the wheel again...

So I started to wonder if it would be possible to define a kind of an 'Industry Standard OEE definition', that would make sure that at least within the same company everybody uses OEE in

the same way. I.E. if we are talking about 'Availability' at least it should be clear that everybody in- or excludes the same issues (i.e. breaks, PM, etc)

What I did was this:

-  I took ALL OEE registrations I had ever seen (quite some...) and figured out where the common denominators were.

-  I grouped all possible OEE elements in a logical way

-  I tried to give all 'negotiable' elements a clear definition.

-  I validated every group as 'Production', 'Failure', 'Idle', 'Unscheduled'

At first I thought this would become a huge document since the equipment I looked at was varying from refineries to cement- and paper mills to beer breweries, food processors, drilling, stamping, welding, plating            well you name it and is was there.

Guess what? I figured out the whole lot of it fits on a couple of A4!

Then I took this concept to some experienced OEE implementers and discussed every element.

Every time we had a discussion, I gave all arguments I had heard and tried to find the Best Of Best argument, considering it had to be applicable on ANY other situation!

In fact this process is still going on, but the picture becomes quite clear.

It is my objective to have an OEE standard definition available where every choice is companion ed with very reasonable and strong argumentation, that (if I did my job well) can not be refuted within the spirit of TPM and Lean Manufacturing.

So far several parties have joined us on this adventure; (most of them you would probably recognize)

A large Beer brewer

A large multinational in soap, food, etc

A Large supplier for Electronic and automotive industry A multinational in cement

A manufacturer of food processing equipment, i.e. for Mac & KFC etc.

I now want to invite every OEE using company to join us in this standard;

1. to check if the definition can stand up to new discussions

2. to get broader support within the industry, so we get more unity in OEE definitions.

Please feel free to join the forum and post your opinion!

Few data, Perfect Information

Lots of time is lost in discussions about what 'Platform, hubs and routers ' should be used, which database is best, how to get as much as possible data in to the magic box;

in other words: not exactly 'Lean Thinking'.

We focused on manufacturing people; what information does the shop floor needs to eliminate losses and to become World Class?

If you promote 'Visual Management' and 5S ; no longer accept a sheet of paper with tons of little numbers as 'information'.

Information is that what leads people into the right direction.

On the shop floor that means:

·         Large, easy to read visual signs, graphs etc.

Be suspicious on any 'information' you can't read from 10 meters!

See how OEE Toolkit generates information from the absolute minimum of collected data. No data is stored that does not leads somehow to loss reduction!