According to one recent study, the average cost of manufacturing downtime across all industries came to an incredible $260,000 per hour in 2016. To make matters worse, that represents a concerning 60% jump from just a few years earlier, in 2014.
Every minute that a machine is offline is a minute that it isn’t making your business money. It’s a minute that you’re delaying essential products from getting into the hands of your customers. It’s a minute that your operators are getting paid to essentially sit and wait. Many organizations turn to downtime tracking in an effort to combat this… but if you don’t do so in just the right way, you could end up doing more harm than good without realizing it.
The Problem With Getting Downtime Tracking Wrong
According to another recent study, industry experts believe that approximately 80% of all manufacturers can’t actually estimate their own downtime in an accurate way. This despite the fact that downtime is the single biggest cost of lost revenue in the world of manufacturing, so you’d think this would always be a top priority.
The major issue is that a lot of organizations are still insisting on tracking downtime by hand. When a machine goes offline, an operator now has to take written notes or enter data into a spreadsheet concerning what happened, what the actual problem was and what steps were taken to fix it.
The trouble with this approach is that it really doesn’t tell you as much as you think it does. You may know exactly when a problem happened, but the “why” of it all is less clear. Was it some type of freak accident that won’t be repeated? Was it operator error? Was it a recurring issue? There’s really no way to differentiate between these things, yet all of them require different resolutions to stop the problem from happening again.
Indeed, this type of improper downtime tracking virtually guarantees that the same issues will repeat themselves at some point in the future. You’re never totally sure that you’re getting the most out of your equipment investment because you’re not really dealing with valid data to begin with.
That’s ultimately why an automated downtime tracking solution like Thrive is of paramount importance. Not only does it instantly collect data pertaining to even the smallest downtime instance, but it does so automatically in a way that virtually eliminates human error in the process.
What you’re left with is an accurate, historical data set to draw from – one that also helps you uncover trends and patterns that you may not have even been aware of. This helps you make meaningful improvements to your operations on a regular basis, which itself is always the most important goal.
If you’d like to learn more about the potential ramifications of improper downtime tracking procedures, or if you’d like to learn more about what our innovative downtime tracking and OEE solution can do for you, please feel free to contact the team at Thrive today.
Short for Overall Equipment Effectiveness, OEE may very well be the single most important metric that all manufacturing operations should be paying careful attention to.
It’s so much more than just another key performance indicator. It gives you more insight than ever into both the technical and operational aspects of your business, showing you what your peak potential can be and what you need to do to get there.
Obviously, this depends on collecting as much data from your equipment, your production lines and even your operators as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of companies still make the mistake of trying to do this manually – something that is equal parts time-consuming and frustrating on the best of days. By automating your OEE efforts, however, you get to enjoy all of the benefits of this process with as few of the potential downsides as possible.
Improve Your Business by Automating OEE
One of the major reasons why it’s so important to automate your OEE-related data collection is that doing this manually opens the process up to the dreaded human error. If a piece of equipment goes offline unexpectedly, for example, but an operator is able to fix it very quickly, they may not make a note of it at all. They may be too busy with something else or think that the event itself wasn’t worth noting.
Yet at the same time, a record of that event is critical within the context of your OEE score. You still need to know as much as you can about stop times and things of that nature, regardless of how inconsequential they may seem. Failure to do so could lead to inaccurate data, which will ultimately impact your ability to draw conclusive value from your OEE score.
But really, one of the biggest advantages of automating your OEE data collection is that you’re freeing up the valuable time of your human employees so that they can be as productive as possible at those tasks that actually need their attention. Yes, the data collection is important – but again, it’s also very time-consuming to “get this one right.” Every minute that an employee is spending capturing data by hand is a minute that they’re not actually making any money for your business.
OEE and downtime tracking solutions like Thrive are simply far better at this type of data collection than human beings are. Therefore, by taking this task off their plate, your employees can focus more of their attention on those tasks that actually need a human in the first place. You get accurate OEE scores, and they get to do better work – which is obviously what all of this is all about.
If you’re interested in learning even more about why it’s so important to automate your data capture efforts when it comes to OEE, or if you just have any additional questions you’d like to speak to someone about in more detail, please feel free to contact the team at Thrive today.
Availability. Performance. Quality. These three factors are at the center of OEE, or Overall Equipment Effectiveness.
At its core, OEE is more than just another key performance indicator. It’s a score that tells you not only how productive you and your manufacturing lines are, but what they can potentially achieve under the right conditions. It looks at the rate at which you’re manufacturing only quality parts with little-to-no stop time – in other words, it’s one of the major keys to continuous improvement.
Manufacturing operations have long been on the hunt for opportunities to reduce costs – this is especially true given everything going on in the world with the COVID-19 pandemic and with supply chain disruptions happening on a regular basis. Thankfully, one of the best ways to save money is also one of the most straightforward: focusing on improving your OEE score as much as you can.
The Relationship Between Costs and OEE
To get an idea of just how effective this approach can be, you must first come to a better understanding of what your OEE score is actually trying to tell you.
Yes, it’s showing you where you currently stand in terms of speed, quality and availability. But if you shift your perspective, it’s also showing you where your current issues are in all three of those areas.
If your OEE score is being dragged down because of your availability score, you can improve it by reducing stops and reconfiguring your line changeovers and retooling processes for maximum effectiveness. If the quality part of the equation is the issue, improving it can help you prevent parts that need to be rejected – thus allowing you to output a higher quality end product far faster than ever.
To put it another way, diving beneath that score shows you which elements of your current operations are wasteful. It can help identify things like materials that are too expensive given what you’re doing, or areas of your production lines that require more labor hours than they should.
Once you know what isn’t working, you begin to get a sense of what you need to do to fix it – and by continuing to monitor that OEE score, you can see the fruits of your labor play out in real-time. Every time you make a strategic change, that score should slowly start to tick upwards – confirming that you’re headed in the right direction.
As your manufacturing lines become leaner and more efficient, the quality of your products goes up while the costs to manufacture them naturally go down. At that point, you can funnel that money back into the business in other areas where it can do the most good.
If you’d like to learn more information about how improving your OEE score can help significantly reduce costs for your operations, or if you’d just like to discuss your own needs with a team of experts in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.
If you had to sum up all of the benefits of downtime tracking software in a single word, “data” would undoubtedly be it.
One of the problems with tracking downtime manually is that it’s a process that practically invites errors from all directions. Sometimes operators are so focused on getting a machine back online that they miss certain events. Other times they themselves don’t have accurate information to work from, so the data they’re entering into a spreadsheet is wrong by default.
With downtime tracking software, on the other hand, data is entered into the solution from the moment production begins. It takes all guesswork out of the equation, making sure that your data is accurate and that you only have the most complete information to work from when making decisions moving forward.
Why Data Quality Matters
This level of automated data collection also brings with it a host of other benefits, too. When you use a downtime tracking solution like Thrive, you’re also able to define a downtime reason – probably the most crucial detail of what you’re trying to accomplish.
The software itself can utilize error codes and other information to denote exactly why a downtime event happened. You’re no longer relying on an operator to do so manually because the software takes care of everything. This is key, because you’ll then be able to look back over historical records and see exactly what types of problems occur on a regular basis. You can see your most common issues, which is information you can use to create a better preventative maintenance plan to stop them from happening again.
That’s not to say that the input of your employees isn’t important, because it is. That’s why downtime tracking solutions also allow for a different type of data collection – operator notes. In addition to the real-time data being generated by the system itself, operators are also free to enter their own insight into the event in question. They can create an additional context surrounding what happened, what the conditions were like and what steps were taken to correct it – all to paint the most complete picture possible.
But maybe the biggest advantage that this level of data collection brings to the table – when paired with the right solution – has to do with how that data is stored. With Thrive, all information is stored in the cloud – meaning that it’s accessible from any device, in any location, at any time. This is especially helpful if you run more than one location.
With this “bird’s eye view” of your entire operations, you can easily compare one location to the other in terms of productivity and other factors that matter most to you. You can also dive deeper and see how to reduce downtime in only one location, as obviously their conditions will always vary.
All told, your ability to reduce downtime depends on your ability to improve your data collection efforts – which is precisely what downtime tracking software is designed to do.
In the world of manufacturing, downtime is defined as any situation where a particular piece of equipment on a factory floor is not running. This can encompass both planned downtime events, like when shifts are changing over or if you’re going through a period of planned maintenance, or unplanned events like sudden outages as well.
For most businesses operating in this sector, downtime is the single biggest cause for lost production time – and lost revenue – that they’re dealing with. According to one recent study, the average cost of downtime across all industries in 2016 was approximately $260,000 every hour. To make matters worse, that was a massive 60% jump from just a few years earlier, in 2014.
The major issue is that these facilities have become increasingly dependent on newer and more advanced technology and when those tech-based assets go offline, it has the potential to take the entirety of a production with them. If equipment is offline, operators can’t work. Expensive parts need to be purchased and delivered. Products may get delayed. Reputational damage may be caused. The list goes on and on.
All of this also illustrates the importance of downtime tracking – something that many businesses were still taking for granted even as recently as a decade ago.
But it would be a mistake to assume that downtime tracking is about only telling you when a particular machine has gone offline. Yes, it’s possible to get automated alerts in these situations so that you can snap into action as quickly as possible. Downtime tracking tells a far bigger story than that, however – and it’s one that it is in your own best interest to pay attention to.
The Narrative at the Heart of Downtime Tracking: An Overview
To get a better idea of the true story that downtime tracking is trying to tell you, it’s important to examine the two types of downtime that exist in a manufacturing environment: planned and unplanned events.
Planned downtime events happen all the time – particularly when it comes to regularly scheduled maintenance. Maybe you’ve identified that a piece of equipment isn’t operating quite as well as it should be so you’re taking it offline for a few hours to change some parts. Maybe you know that it’s been long enough to where regularly scheduled maintenance is now critical. Even something like product changeover would be an example of planned downtime, as once you take into consideration the setups and adjustments that need to be made you’re still looking at a period where that machine isn’t operating.
The thing to understand is that planned downtime always still comes at a cost and sometimes these events take far longer than you think they do. It’s always in the best interest of both organizational leaders and your operators to make sure these happen as quickly as possible. If a product changeover takes too long, it’s eating into the amount of potential revenue you could be generating in a day. Every minute that planned maintenance takes longer than you expected it to is a minute that you’re losing money – not to mention a minute than an operator is getting paid for a situation where they literally don’t have what they need to do their jobs.
Therefore, downtime tracking in this situation would be crucial because it would tell you exactly how long these events are taking, helping to illustrate areas for potential improvement. Are shift changeovers taking far longer than you expected? Once you know that to be the case, you can begin to dive deeper into why it might be happening – thus allowing you to correct the problem as soon as possible.
The same is true of unplanned downtime, albeit from a slightly different perspective. Unlike planned downtime, unplanned downtime usually has no expected timeframe attached to it. These events can occur without warning and can last indefinitely, which is why people tend to be more concerned with them than their planned counterparts.
For the sake of example, let’s say that a critical piece of equipment goes offline due to the failure of one specific component. Obviously, in this situation you would know the “why” – a component failed and you now need to expedite the process of fixing it. But there are still questions that you don’t know the answers to that downtime tracking can help shed light on.
Were there any warning signs in advance of the downtime event that this might be occurring? Is this a component that fails on a regular basis? What is the root cause of the issue and how do you stop it from happening again? These are the types of questions that you can only answer if you’re tracking everything and anything, which is why downtime tracking is so invaluable.
In addition to unplanned downtime events due to part failures, downtime tracking can also help contextualize things like machine jams. If a machine jams, an operator obviously needs to be present to fix the issue. If they’re not currently by the machine, they need to be located and reassigned to that location. Downtime tracking can help with resource allocation by always making sure that people are in the right place at exactly the right time.
The same is true of unplanned downtime events that are caused by issues like poor maintenance practices. If machines aren’t inspected and maintained on a regular basis, all you’re doing is increasing the chances that they are eventually going to break down. Not only does this harm the productivity of the factory floor, but it also potentially creates an unsafe working environment, too. Therefore, embracing downtime tracking helps clue you into these small problems ahead of time – all so that you can do something about them before they become much bigger and more expensive ones later on.
Downtime Tracking Best Practices
Of course, even the best downtime tracking solution is only as good as the data you feed it – which is why if you really want to leverage all of this to your advantage, there are a number of critical things to keep in mind.
Chief among these is the idea that you need to be able to define a reason for any problem that you’re experiencing in a consistent, structured way. A lot of times, your downtime tracking solution will do this for you – it will use error codes and other data collected by the machine itself to quickly define a reason for the stoppage.
Operator notes should also be present, however, to help again provide as much context as possible. This should include not only the reason for the problem itself, but what steps were taken to correct it. This is key in terms of historical reporting, as at some point you’re going to want to look back and examine the recurring issues that you’ve been facing. The only way you’ll be able to draw actionable conclusions from that data is if it is as detailed as possible, which is why defining a reason and providing notes is of paramount importance.
Likewise, downtime automation should be practiced to help avoid the manual entry of information as much as possible. There are still organizations that are attempting to track all downtime and related events by hand and, make no mistake, they’re doing themselves a disservice.
Manual entry is prone to human error, which is the opposite of what you want in this situation. You want to be able to trust the data and draw actionable conclusions from it. Likewise, an operator may deem a downtime event to be “so insignificant” that it isn’t worth noting at all. Maybe they were able to get that machine back up and running again quickly, and that’s great – but you still need to be aware that the problem happened to begin with. It could be a small warning sign that some bigger issue is lurking on the horizon and you won’t be able to heed that warning if you weren’t aware it happened at all.
In the end, while it’s absolutely true that downtime tracking is a viable way to get alerted to an issue with a piece of equipment immediately after it happens, this is also only a fraction of its full potential. The more you use downtime tracking software, the more data it collects – which means the more valuable it becomes.
Soon, you can start using it to compare the efficiency of one piece of equipment to the next. You can examine the relationships between production lines or even certain shifts on a given day. If yours is a manufacturing enterprise with more than one location, you can even compare how certain facilities are doing under similar contexts.
All of this comes together to form a complete story of now only where your organization is, but how far it has come and where it might be headed. This in and of itself is invaluable in terms of staying competitive and more.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness, otherwise known as OEE for short, is a way to measure the overall productivity of your manufacturing facility. It takes a look at just three core metrics – quality, performance and availability. The closer you can get your score to 100%, the closer you get to a scenario where you’re only manufacturing the highest quality parts, with as little stop time as possible, as efficiently as you possibly can.
Of course, nobody has an OEE score of 100% – but that’s okay. It’s important to understand what you’re really trying to do when you increase that number goes far beyond simply unlocking additional productivity. That’s key, yes – but equally so is OEE’s ability to help you become a more competitive organization than ever before.
OEE and Your Relationship to the Market at Large
All told, OEE helps organizations like yours unlock a host of unique benefits in terms of competitiveness, all at the exact same time. Chief among them is the fact that it helps you get the best possible performance out of the machinery you’ve already invested in.
If you know that your equipment is capable of producing 1000 parts per hour but it’s currently only producing 750, you obviously have a problem on your hands. But now, you no longer have to guess as to why – you’ll be able to see beyond the shadow of a doubt and make those adjustments as needed. The more productive you are, the more competitive you are – it really doesn’t get much more straightforward than that.
Likewise, OEE is often seen as the key to unlocking the best possible return on investment for those assets. If you know the maximum productivity of not only your equipment but also of your processes, you know what you need to do to correct certain issues that may have reared their ugly head. This helps guarantee that you’re spending your money as wisely as possible, allowing you to make better and more informed decisions as to where those funds are going in the first place.
But perhaps the biggest way that OEE helps increase the competitiveness of your organization comes by way of the increased process quality that you get to enjoy. Poor quality or otherwise defective products are the bane of any manufacturing professional’s existence. They’re a “cost of doing business,” to be sure – but this also doesn’t have to be nearly as big of a problem for your operations as it likely is.
OEE brings with it more visibility into your processes, which allows you to quickly pinpoint any decline in quality that is taking place. You don’t just know that quality is going down – you know what is causing it, which parts of your enterprise it is impacting and more. At that point, you can take meaningful steps to minimize those quality losses to put out better quality products than your competitors faster than ever. That in and of itself may be the most important advantage of OEE of them all.
One problem that organizations in the world of manufacturing commonly deal with has to do with the fact that there are so many different metrics to track that it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Throughput. Cycle time. Process end time. Inventory turns. All of these things are important to stay abreast of, yes – but with so many key performance indicators in the wild, it can quickly prove overwhelming. How does product attainment actually relate to avoided costs? What do changeover times have to do with your overall performance? Which of these factors actually impacts your return on investment in a meaningful way? It can be very, very easy to overthink what should ultimately be a simple, straightforward situation.
That, in essence, is why Overall Equipment Effectiveness (or OEE for short) is so important. Not only does it help to eliminate a lot of the guesswork from the equation, but it helps to remove a lot of the confusion, too. What you’re left with is a vivid picture of the steps you need to take to improve the quality of your work, the speed at which you’re able to produce that quality, and how you can eliminate some of the common losses you may be experiencing along the way.
The Major Benefits of OEE Automation
By far, the biggest advantage of an OEE system is that it helps you better understand your current (not to mention potential future) performance in a visual way that is easy for anyone to understand.
Keep in mind that your OEE software will show you a percentage of the planned production time of your operations that is truly that – productive. A score of 100% means that you’re manufacturing the highest quality parts, with no down time, as quickly as you’re currently able to.
Once you know that, you have what you need to take a look at certain production inefficiencies that may exist, along with losses that you’re experiencing in the three aforementioned areas. By way of an associated manufacturing KPI dashboard, you can literally see which of your current operations are working well and which areas need improvement – allowing you to take action to fix the latter and empower the former as soon as you’re able to.
This also gives way to a deeper level of production insight than ever before. Don’t forget that you don’t know what you’re not measuring and if you’re not measuring something, you can’t improve it. More often than not, manufacturers in particular make the mistake of assuming that their operations are far more efficient than they really are. That, too, is the great thing about OEE – you can’t argue with a score like that.
Once you begin to measure everything about your operations, you see in cold, hard terms which areas of your facility are at peak efficiency, which ones may be moving in that direction and which ones are in dire need of improvement. From that perspective it’s about putting actionable intelligence in the palm of your hand – all so that you can make smarter and more informed decisions moving forward.
But even going beyond all of that, OEE also helps to identify not just losses, but the six major losses that manufacturers often deal with in terms of production. These include ones like:
Availability losses. This category encompasses not only breakdowns and failures, but also certain productivity issues that you may be dealing with in terms of setups and adjustments that take longer than they should.
Performance losses. This can involve not only small stops that end up taking up far more time than you realize in a given day, but also instances of reduced speed as well.
Quality losses. While certain start-up and production rejects are something of a foregone conclusion, you’d be shocked to learn how much money they’re costing you once you really start paying attention to why and how often they’re happening.
In a larger sense, OEE brings with it the major benefit of helping manufacturers achieve the highest possible return on investment for their equipment. Every single asset on a shop floor is an investment, and it’s one that deserves to be protected. In order to hit the biggest ROI that you can as quickly as possible, you need to guarantee that all of those machines are being used in the most efficient way that they’re capable of.
That’s a large part of what world class OEE reporting is trying to tell you. It’s giving you insight into not only where you can make changes to improve performance, but also what changes need to be made and how they should be best implemented. You can also see this information within the context of your entire organization. You can compare one piece of machinery to the next in terms of performance, or even compare multiple locations if yours is a larger business.
Regardless, that critical level of context is what allows you to continuously improve your operations – all of which makes you more competitive than ever as well.
How to Improve Your OEE Score
As stated, the highest possible OEE score that one can achieve is 100%. This means that you’re only manufacturing the best quality parts, without stop time, as quickly as you can.
If that seems like a lofty goal, that’s because it is – absolutely nobody gets an OEE score of 100%. These operations are still run by humans, after all, and humans aren’t perfect. Having said that, there are a number of steps that you can take to improve your OEE score as much as possible.
One of the best ways to improve your OEE score is to assign one person to monitor your progress, both now and in the future. Part of the reason why businesses struggle with OEE implementation has to do with there being “too many cooks in the kitchen.” What you need is one person who can take ownership of the long-term goal of improving OEE, monitoring your progress on a daily basis and making recommendations as to what you need to do to improve it, why, when and where.
For the best results, this person should be someone who is already well respected within your organization – particularly on the factory floor. They’re going to be making recommendations as to how certain people can improve the job they’re doing so it would be helpful to come at that from a place of mutual respect. Obviously, this should also be someone who feels comfortable working with large amounts of data as well.
Another major way to improve your OEE score has to do with embracing not only automation, but visualization with open arms.
OEE automation and data collection is important because you’re not relying on your operators to manually enter information. Manual data entry is a process that is prone for error and if you’re not tracking things accurately, you’re not getting nearly the level of insight that you thought you were. Plus, your operators already have a job to do and you don’t want to distract them from it.
Data visualization means taking all that information that you’re collecting and presenting it in a way that is easy for absolutely anyone to understand. Many OEE and downtime tracking solutions do this for you so you don’t have to worry about it. In addition to drawing conclusions and insights faster, data visualization by way of a manufacturing KPI dashboard is a way to take even complicated topics and make them far easier for anyone to understand.
As a note, however, you’ll also want to make sure that operators are making notes whenever issues like production stops come up. OEE automation is great for collecting cold, hard information about when a stop happened, how long it lasted for and similar bits of data. But nothing will replace that human insight which is why operator comments should be welcome. They should outline the conditions when the issue arise, what they did to fix the problem and more – all so that this can be preserved for the purposes of historical OEE reporting.
In the long-term, this level of visualization also brings with it the added benefit of allowing you to see the fruits of your labor in real-time. When you make a strategic adjustment in an effort to fix a particular problem with quality or availability, you’ll know almost instantly whether it is working or not. You don’t have to wait weeks or even months to find out if you were successful – you’ll know right away so that you can either double down on the path you’re on or pivot again in an attempt to find a better solution.
In the end, Overall Equipment Effectiveness is more than just another key performance indicator. It may very well be the most important way to see how far your organization has come and what direction it might be headed in.
Believe it or not, there are still manufacturing organizations that track their downtime events and related data manually. They usually do so by entering information into spreadsheets using applications like Microsoft Excel and others.
To be fair, there was an era when this was more than adequate to “get the job done,” so to speak. But that era has long since ended – especially for those businesses who want to remain as competitive as possible.
All told, there are a wide range of different problems associated with tracking downtime events via spreadsheets that are certainly worth a closer look.
The Trouble With Spreadsheets: An Overview
By far, the biggest issue associated with tracking downtime via spreadsheets is that it depends on your workers having the time to enter information as soon after the event as possible. At the same time, they’re also probably focusing on getting that machine back online – meaning that opening Microsoft Excel and spending time entering data is never going to be their top priority, nor should it be. Because of that, it’s very easy to miss certain events – leading to inaccurate data that is difficult to draw appropriate conclusions from.
Along the same lines, this type of manual data gives way to the dreaded human error – something that also calls into question the validity of the information you’re working with. In this situation, the length of a downtime event is probably an estimate, for example. An employee may have rounded up and said that a piece of equipment was offline for an hour, when it was really only down for about 45 minutes. It may not seem like a big difference, but it is – especially when you’re using that information to prioritize resource allocation in the future.
Not only that, but they may have considered a downtime event to be “so small” that they didn’t have to record it in the first place. Doing so wasn’t worth their time when the event didn’t really lead to any type of significant disruption. But it’s still something you need to know about when putting together a preventative maintenance plan – which is now crucial information that you just don’t have.
Finally, as spreadsheets get larger and larger, they become slower and more difficult to work with. They were never designed with this purpose in mind and by continuing to use them in that way, you’re actually making it more difficult for people to do their jobs. In reality, the exact opposite should be true – technology should support and empower them.
All of these issues underline why automated downtime tracking like the capabilities offered by Thrive’s solution are so important. They eliminate the need for your employees to do anything at all, capturing accurate information in real-time with the highest level of detail possible. Operators are now free to focus more of their attention on those tasks that truly need them, as opposed to dealing with unwieldy spreadsheets and matters that just don’t concern them.
If you had to make a list of some of the things that keep manufacturers up at night, downtime would undoubtedly be right at the top.
One minute, your manufacturing lines are operating at peak efficiency – or at least as close to it as possible – and everything seems to be going smoothly. The next, a critical piece of equipment has gone offline and you’re not sure when it’s going to be up again. Every minute that machine isn’t running is a minute you’re losing money – a worst case scenario if there ever was one.
That, in essence, is why downtime tracking is so important. It doesn’t just tell you what went wrong – it gives you insight into why, all so that you can do something about it as quickly as possible.
But simply having that information isn’t enough to get the job done. You still need to put yourself in a position to act on it – something that depends on your ability to keep a few important things in mind.
The Art of Downtime Tracking: An Overview
Obviously, the biggest element to reducing downtime is an awareness of what is happening to begin with – something that downtime tracking software helps enormously with. You can see a real-time view into your current operations and compare it to a historical overview of the types of common issues that you’ve been experiencing. At that point, you’re able to see which issues crop up time and again so that you can take permanent steps to fix them.
At the same time, you also need to know more about important metrics like how long it is taking your teams to repair those assets whenever they go offline. Your overall responses to downtime instances need to be recorded and evaluated just as closely as the events themselves. This will help make sure that your people have the tools they need to make repairs quickly, all to get those machines online again as fast as they can.
Similarly, you need to be able to understand the amount of time that is happening between downtime events as it relates not just to specific pieces of equipment, but to your entire line. This will give you the actionable insight you need to put together a better, more proactive maintenance program that allows you to stop small problems now before they have a chance to become much bigger ones down the road.
In the end, understand that when you’re talking about machines and technology, downtime is never something that you can truly eliminate. This is absolutely one of those situations where Murphy’s Law very much applies. But you can take meaningful steps to mitigate the risk and impact of these events when they do occur, which is exactly what downtime tracking is all about.
Your ability to think and act quickly depends on the quality of your data, which is why picking the right downtime tracking solution should always be a top priority.
Lean manufacturing may seem like something of a buzzword, but in practice that impression couldn’t be farther from the truth.
At its core, the term simply refers to the optimization of your manufacturing processes in a way that eliminates as much waste as possible, all while making sure that you’re delivering the maximum amount of value to your customers at all times.
All told, lean manufacturing is absolutely an achievable goal – and getting to that point is a lot easier than you might think. OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) also plays a significant role in it. It simply requires you to keep a few key things in mind.
Why Lean Manufacturing Matters: An Overview
As stated, the major benefit of lean manufacturing comes from how it helps you eliminate as much waste as possible from your manufacturing processes. This almost immediately leads to a significant increase in quality performance – meaning that you’re dealing with fewer instances of defects and necessary reworks of products, both in-house and at the customer level.
In addition to helping you improve the total amount of time that you’re manufacturing quality products, this also helps to dramatically improve the quality of the customer experience you’re able to offer – which in and of itself may be the most important benefit of all.
Lean manufacturing best practices also lead to fewer machine and process breakdowns, which can also save your organization a significant amount of money. Indeed, this is one of the major areas where OEE makes such a big impression. You can’t improve what you’re not measuring and if you know at a moment’s notice which of your manufacturing processes are working and which ones aren’t, you can double down on the former and get rid of the latter as soon as the opportunity becomes available to you.
Of course, lean manufacturing also has significant financial impacts on your business – with lower levels of inventory being chief among them. If you know how much of your manufacturing processes are creating A) quality parts, B) as quickly as possible, and C) with as little stop time as possible, you know exactly how much inventory you need to keep on hand at a given moment. This in turn creates lower levels of stock turnover, and it also frees up valuable space in areas like warehouses for you to use for those matters that truly need it.
In the end, OEE and lean manufacturing aren’t two different concepts at all – they’re two sides of the exact same coin. By paying attention to your OEE score, you begin to embrace the best practices of lean manufacturing with open arms. Not only does this lead to improve employee morale and involvement, but it almost always leads to improved supplier relations, too.
Before you know it, this begins to segue into instances of increased business by way of higher profits – which in and of itself may be the most important benefit of all.
"A few months after installing the Thrive Downtime Tracking System"
we identified several key issues with our manufacturing line. Once corrected, our efficiency sky rocketed from 39% to 75%.
- Pat Kinnee, Splenda Continuous Improvement Engineer
"We're currently running 8% better than our budgeted throughput standards, "
so I consider it a win. Now we’re in a position where our other plants are interested in implementing the software.
- Pete Szelwach, Plant Manager at Lassonde Pappas and Company, Inc.
"We've been using Thrive for about a year with impressive results. "
Changeovers that used to take 33 minutes now only take 23. With around two each day, that time really adds up. Before using the software, we were 20 minutes into our morning shift before lines started running, and we’ve cut it down to just 8 minutes. Overall efficiency has spiked from around 45% to an average of 60%. Seeing the data has really helped us create a culture of ownership and accountability. Everyone watches the measurements and does their best to make sure things are running efficiently, because they can see the impact. With the help of Thrive, we’ve had zero overtime during our busy season. That’s a company first! Now that we’re meeting production goals, we can be proactive and schedule time to take lines down for preventative maintenance.
- Rollie Everson, Maintenance Supervisor, Amsoil
"We were ready to pay $250,000 for a downtime system when by accident we stumbled across Thrive MES on the internet"
“Not only did it offer everything the more expensive system did but it is a fraction of the price. We were even able to customize to our facility far within our budget.”
”After 2 years I was still able to teach them a few big things about the software that they didn’t know about. A recent major success they had was they were able to reduce their downtime by 17 whole shifts per year by making a small tweak in a process. Instead of stopping a machine to make a fabric slice for 1 minute, they slowed the machine down to make the slice while the machine was moving. They also noticed how much downtime changeovers caused so their scheduled department reduced their changesovers from 6 to 1 per week.”
- Steve Kaiser, Operations Manager, Sage Products
"Within 2 weeks their automated machines saw an increased efficiency by 20%"
by giving the operator real-time visibility, they took more ownership and responsibility for the machine’s output. As a result, it made the operator think twice about shutting down the line. ‘Can I correct this issue without shutting the machine down?
- John Batten, President, NHI Pullies Inc
"We've been able to cut our overtime by 60%"
as we identified that our change overs were the main source of downtime. Using this data to determine and implement solutions we were able to move from 12 hours shifts to 8 hour shifts. It also helped us reduce our quality issues by identifying sources of inefficiency.
- Mark Hennigan, Director of Operations, CHG
"We are really happy with it and love the planned downtime function."
The planned downtime function immediately identified excessive breaks and created accountability for the line running. Management now has real-time data.
- Keith Frazier, Maintenance Supervisor, Skyline Steel
"The real-time data"
in our break rooms and on our supervisor’s computers have created a real sense of urgency and ownership to improve our plant’s performance. You can’t argue with a 50 inch TV in the break room that updates every second.
