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.

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.

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.