One significant mistake that a lot of organizations make in terms of OEE, or Overall Equipment Effectiveness involves the assumption that it is something of a silver bullet. Yes, the score is important – but it’s only valuable if you’re following the right process to begin with.
Therefore, it’s key to understand the types of common mistakes that people make when calculating OEE so that you can avoid them at all costs.
OEE Pitfalls to Steer Clear Of
By far, one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of manufacturing organizations make when calculating OEE involves working with a data set that was collected over a painfully short period of time.
Yes, you’re eager to gain access to the type of insight that OEE can provide so you can make continuous improvements to your operations. By Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the old saying reminds us. If you apply OEE data collection to just one day – or worse, just one shift – you’re really not getting as much insight as you think you are. You haven’t collected enough data to truly understand what “normal” is and if you experience even a single prolonged downtime event, it’s going to skew your OEE score in a way that ultimately makes it impossible to derive anything relevant from.
Instead, collect data at a bare minimum over the course of a month – if not longer. That will allow you to factor in any peaks in productivity, as well as the regular downtime occurrences that you experience. It will take a bit of additional time, yes – but the insights you get will be far more accurate because of it.
Another major mistake that businesses make in terms of OEE involves some deeply-rooted need to capture information by hand. Not only does this open things up to the dreaded human error, but it also takes time and attention away from your employees who could be focusing on bigger and better things.
If your operators still have to manually make a note of production information and downtime events in a spreadsheet (or worse, on paper), you’re almost inviting inaccurate data. There may be an event that is so short that they don’t feel the need to record it at all – which is a problem, since an accurate OEE score depends on a record of all such events, regardless of how inconsequential they may seem.
Instead, you need to invest in the right software that can automate as much of this process as possible. Not only will you again be able to obtain accurate data about how you’re doing and how you could be doing better, but you’ll also be able to enjoy the confidence that only comes with knowing your OEE score is as accurate as possible.
To get additional insight into these and other types of OEE mistakes that you would certainly want to avoid for the best results, or to speak to an expert about your own downtime tracking needs in a bit more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact Thrive today.
