As a measure of three important factors of your manufacturing operations – quality, performance and availability – Overall Equipment Effectiveness is essentially the most important metric that you could possibly be tracking.
Of course, this demands the question – how do you know if you actually have a good OEE score? What is that score really trying to tell you, anyway? The answers to those questions are relatively straightforward, provided that you keep a few key things in mind.
What’s in an OEE Score? Your Overview
One of the most critical things to understand about your OEE score is that, while this metric is measured on a scale of 0% to 100%, the latter is not necessarily an achievable goal. It would be great to be operating at total peak efficiency at all times with no errors and no stop time to speak of, but it’s important to be realistic. Absolutely nobody gets an OEE score of 100% – to err is human, after all. Instead, it’s recommended that you shoot for a baseline of around 85%. If you can get anywhere near that number, you can be confident in knowing that you’re on the right track.
Having said that, once you begin to measure your OEE score and if you do come away with any other number than the one referenced above, there are still valuable things you can learn. An OEE score of 60% or less, for example, shows that there is significant room for improvement across your enterprise. This may be disappointing, but you need to see it for what it really is – an opportunity to continuously better yourself and build an even stronger organization moving forward.
Still, you need to take a careful look at things like stoppages and where you’re losing production. Try to pay attention to the types of problems you’re commonly having and see what you can do to not only address them, but to prevent them from happening again in the future.
If you’re operating with an OEE score of between 60% and 85%, congratulations – you fall in line with the vast majority of manufacturers. There is still room for improvement, but it’s decidedly less critical than it would be with a lower score. You should still monitor your production lines and capitalize on areas for advancement, but you can also rest easy knowing that you’re probably doing about as well as you currently can be given the circumstances.
If you manage to achieve an OEE score of greater than 85%? That means you’re at the top of the top in terms of manufacturing. Whatever you’re doing, by all means continued – it’s served you well so far and will continue to do so for years to come.
If you’d like to find out more information about how to tell whether or not you have a solid OEE score, or if you’re just eager to find out more about what downtime tracking can do for your operations, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.
