If you had to make a list of some of the things that keep manufacturers up at night, equipment downtime would undoubtedly be right at the top.

One minute, you have a production line that is operating at peak efficiency – or at least as close to it as you can get. The next minute, a critical piece of machinery has gone offline and you have no idea when it’s coming back. Is it an issue with the operator? Were the settings correct? Do you need a part that you don’t necessarily have on-hand? These are questions that don’t have easy answers and every minute that machine is offline is a minute you’re losing money.

Thankfully, with a downtime tracking solution like Thrive, eliminating (or at least reducing) these types of issues is a relatively straightforward process. All you have to do is follow a few basic steps, and keep a number of important pointers in mind along the way.

Best Practices for Reducing Equipment Downtime

By far, one of the best ways to reduce equipment downtime is to categorize the reasons for any losses that you’re experiencing. In other words, you need to understand WHY your equipment is shutting down so that you can learn more about WHAT you need to do about it.

This is one of those areas where a downtime tracking solution like Thrive will come in handy. Not only will you be able to capture the length of all downtime events that you experience, but operators will also be able to categorize exactly why those events are happening. Over the long-term, this will help you uncover trends and patterns that likely would have gone undiscovered – all so that you can make whatever adjustments you need to stop them from happening again.

Along the same lines, another one of the best ways to reduce equipment downtime involves performing regular maintenance as often as you can. On the one hand, this may seem contradictory as maintenance always requires a particular machine to go offline.

But when you’re using a downtime tracking tool that also helps you regularly inspect the mission critical assets on your production floor, you also get access to insight that will help you identify when demand for those assets drops. In other words, you know both when it would be the least disruptive to perform maintenance and what you need to do in order to keep that asset running at peak efficiency.

Preventative maintenance is the perfect way to both stop small problems now before they have a chance to become bigger (and costlier) ones later, and to minimize equipment failure moving forward. Both of those factors save your business a tremendous amount of money, which is why this is one area you should always be paying attention to.

If you’re interested in learning about even more effective ways to reduce equipment downtime for your business, or if you’d just like to see what machine downtime and OEE tracking can do for you, please don’t hesitate to contact Thrive today.

Although the trends and patterns that OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) helps you discover may be complicated, the concept at the heart of it is anything but. You’re simply talking about the rate at which you’re manufacturing A) high-quality parts, B) as quickly as possible, C) with as little stop time as you can manage.

An OEE score of 100% would mean that you were manufacturing ONLY those quality parts, as quickly as you can, with total availability across the board. Obviously, no business is ever going to get to that point – but it’s still important that you continue to try.

Naturally, a big part of that issue involves quality losses. Defective products make up a big percentage of lost revenue for any organization, so naturally, you want to put a stop to it wherever you can. When analyzing industrial performance metrics, it’s crucial to identify areas where defects occur and take proactive measures to minimize them. Getting to that point isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does require you to keep a few key things in mind.

Reducing Quality Losses the Actionable Way

One of the best ways to reduce quality losses – and thus improve your OEE score – involves lowering startup rejects wherever possible.

Startup rejects are actually a great place to begin to that end, because they’re fairly easy to track. They tend to rear their ugly heads during that gap between project startup and steady production, where you have a better idea of what you’re dealing with. These tend to be a result of not only errors in the setup process, but also changeovers, equipment readiness issues and more.

One way to reduce these types of startup rejects involves actually ramping back your initial production. The first batch of products to go across your production lines will naturally have some issues. But instead of throwing out a large volume of products and restarting, instead produce a much smaller amount to spot any potential problems early before they have a chance to become much bigger (and more expensive) ones later on.

You could also try reducing variation – which is a term used to describe situations where you may have perfectly fine quality products one day, only to experience significant issues the next. Variation is caused by an unfortunately large list of issues, including inconsistent settings from one machine to the next and inconsistencies in terms of material quality.

To avoid this, figure out why you’re experiencing issues in variation and do whatever you can to solve them. Typically, this involves getting even more strict in terms of those factors outlined above, such as implementing Operational Downtime Tracking to monitor inefficiencies in production processes more effectively. Not only does this allow you to achieve much more consistent results across the board, but it also goes a long way towards saving your organization as much money as possible by minimizing delays and improving overall efficiency.

If you’d like to find out more information about the actionable steps that you can take to reduce quality losses, or if you’d just like to experiment more with how downtime tracking can benefit your organization, please don’t delay – contact the team at Thrive today.

As a manufacturing professional, continuous improvement is obviously a concept that is always at the forefront of your mind.

Even if you’re completely happy with the way things are going today… there are always opportunities for improvement. Capitalizing on those opportunities is one of the best ways to not only increase revenue, but to also remain competitive in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

That, in essence, is why OEE tracking will always matter. Also commonly referred to as Overall Equipment Effectiveness for short, OEE tracking is all about gaining a deeper understanding of the quality, availability and performance of your production lines. Not just in terms of your overall business, but down to things like the shift, the piece of equipment in question and even the individual operator.

The Power of OEE

One of the major reasons why OEE will always matter has to do with the six big types of losses that will constantly be present across your operations. These include things like:

• Unplanned stops, that are likely the result of issues like equipment failure.
• Planned stops, which may be necessary but can always be improved by taking a closer look at things like setups and adjustments.
• Small stops, which are usually caused by idling and minor stops that may not be so minor under closer examination.
• Slow cycles, which are the result of reduced speed, among other factors.
• Production rejects, which may point to an issue in your production process somewhere.
• Startup rejects, which typically always translate to reduced yield.

OEE takes a look at all of these issues within the context of fully productive time. This in turn also gives you insight into how much of your operator’s time they’re able to maximize on a daily basis.

A lot of these things can be exacerbated – and on the flip side, corrected – by equipment maintenance. If you’re still practicing a reactive maintenance plan – meaning that you’re simply waiting for something to break so you can fix it – you’ll likely see increased instances of those six big losses outlined above.

On the contrary, if you’re practicing predictive maintenance – meaning that you’re stopping small issues before they have a chance to become much larger ones – you’ll eliminate these problems across the board.

Remember that machines that break down frequently are nearly impossible to optimize for that reason. This creates a ripple effect in the worst possible way. Not only does this reduce your ideal cycle time, but it also probably contributes to an increased number of product defects as well.

OEE can help you better understand where your issues lie within the context of all of this, putting you in the best possible position to do something about it.

To find out more information about why OEE is always going to be an important metric for your organization, or to speak to someone about your own situation in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.

As mentioned in the past, OEE (or Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is all about measuring the true productivity of your manufacturing lines. If you’re able to achieve an OEE score of 100%, it means that you’re dealing with no stop time, that you’re working as quickly as possible and that you’re only manufacturing high quality parts.

A lot of organizations use OEE (in association with things like downtime tracking tools) to pay closer attention to the actual equipment being used on their factory floors every day. Indeed, this is a great way to identify small issues with things like equipment maintenance now so that you can stop them from becoming much bigger (and potentially more costly) ones down the road.

But at the same time, one must not overlook another key component that has a direct impact on your OEE score: the operators themselves.

OEE and Your Operators: An Overview

One situation where your OEE score can absolutely be impacted by your operators has to do with those times when you may be short a worker on the factory floor.

Remember that OEE is all about identifying equipment-based losses. In the event that you’re short an operator for whatever reason, you can’t run your equipment at its fully intended speed – meaning that your OEE score would absolutely be lower than it otherwise would.

The only way OEE works is if you use it to identify all losses, regardless of where they’re coming from. If you’re short someone on the floor, that is preventing you from unlocking the maximum potential of your equipment – meaning that you need to include it in your calculations. At the very least, it’ll give you a much-needed context to understand where those losses are coming from.

This is especially true in situations where you may be down an operator but you’re still dealing with full customer demand. In that situation, the lack of an operator would absolutely be treated as an OEE issue.

If you’re short an operator and it’s during a time when you’re not dealing with full customer demand, however, you wouldn’t necessarily need to look at things the exact same way. Sure, your ideal cycle time may change given the current conditions that you’re working with – but it won’t immediately impact your overall OEE score for that particular shift.

Along the same lines, if you’re ever in a situation where you can’t run a process due to a lack of operator that, too, is an OEE issue. More specifically, it impacts your availability score – because you’re dealing with a manufacturing process that should have been executed but that wasn’t.

In the end, never forget that OEE is designed to help you do one thing above all others: identify your losses so that you can put a stop to them as much as possible. Obviously, you probably aren’t caught off guard by the fact that you’re short an operator. But you still need to include this fact in your calculations anyway so that you can continue to trust your larger scores moving forward.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness, otherwise known as OEE short, is a standard used to measure three core areas of your manufacturing process: quality, performance and availability.

A high OEE score means that you’re creating as many quality parts as you can, as quickly as you can, with little to no stop time to speak of. Obviously, nobody gets an OEE score of 100% because none of us are perfect – but it’s still in your best interest to try to get that score as high as you can conceivably get it.

Having said that, customers often have a question of how reworked parts should be included in this calculation. Understanding the situation regarding this is luckily straightforward – it’s just that it requires you to keep a few key things in mind.

The Impact of Part Quality on OEE

One common best practice in OEE has to do with the fact that any parts that need to be reworked should be counted as rejects as they initially go through your manufacturing process.

To that end, quality parts are defined as those that don’t need to go through any reworking at all during this period.

What makes the situation slightly trickier, however, has to do with instances where parts may need to be reworked multiple times in order to achieve that quality threshold. This may happen for a wide range of reasons, but ultimately why it occurred matters less than what you do next.

If you decide to treat your reworked parts as essentially “new” meaning that you’re starting the process from scratch, it will impact your OEE score like any other aspect of your manufacturing process. Doing this is usually preferred in those situations when you’re mixing in reworked parts with those that hit their quality threshold right out of the gate. You’ll need to pay particular attention to make sure that your part counts stay as accurate as possible, however, or you run the risk of skewing your entire OEE score.

If you’re dealing with a situation when rejected parts have been reworked after the initial production was completed, you don’t necessarily have to count this against your OEE score. The thinking here is that the poor-quality parts already caused a hit to your OEE score when they were rejected the first time – you don’t necessarily need to do it again.

But overall, the context surrounding your manufacturing process will likely play a role in determining what, if any, impact these re-worked parts will have. Equally complicating things is the fact that sometimes reworked parts cause your manufacturing processes to run at less than peak speed as they get reworked a second time. Sometimes an issue only affected the packaging of a part and not the part itself – which really shouldn’t impact your OEE score at all.

Still, you need to pay attention to all of this so that you understand what your OEE score is really trying to tell you – and so that you can use it to make the best decisions you can at all times.

One of the most important things to understand about your OEE score is that really, you’re talking about three distinct metrics that come together to give you the most complete picture possible regarding how your manufacturing is working and where it could be better.

An OEE score that hits that coveted 100% marker (don’t worry, nobody has an OEE score of 100%) means that you’re manufacturing only the highest quality parts, with near constant availability, as quickly as humanly possible.

But at the same time, depending on the nature of your own environment you may not actually be in a position to detect rejected parts during the initial manufacturing process. Sometimes, you don’t have this information until hours or even days after the fact. If that’s the case for you, does it suddenly mean that you can’t implement OEE across your own production lines?

No. Far from it. In fact, the situation is a lot more straightforward than you might think – you just need to keep a few key things in mind.

OEE and Rejected Parts: Breaking Things Down

In the event that the total number of rejected parts aren’t immediately obvious to you as the manufacturing process continues in real-time, there are a few key steps you can take.

Obviously, you could simply delay calculating your OEE score until all of the information is available to you. Most people don’t necessarily use OEE as a real-time metric anyway – they use it to break down performance over specific periods to see where opportunities for improvement really lay.

You could also simply calculate your OEE score based on the information you do have available to you – that is, availability and performance. Here, you wouldn’t be including quality at all because you won’t have that information quite yet. Since availability and performance are the two major factors that impact your production time anyway, it’s still a valuable way to see what about your current operations is working and, more importantly, what isn’t. You should be mindful of the fact that you’re not including quality in this, however, as you’re not really getting the “complete picture” that you otherwise would.

Finally, you could essentially choose to calculate your OEE score twice – once using only availability and performance information as outlined above, and then again once information about the total number of rejected parts rolls in. This means that your OEE score will “change” after you first calculate it, at least on paper. But at the same time, it can be very confusing to track where your performance losses really are so this method isn’t necessarily recommended.

Regardless of which option you choose, the key thing is to fully understand what your OEE score is trying to tell you. Provided that you understand the context surrounding that number and what contributed to it, you’ll be able to use it as a guidepost to make the best and most informed decisions possible in the moment.

Otherwise known as Overall Equipment Effectiveness, OEE is a standard used to measure the overall productivity of your manufacturing environment. If you’re able to achieve an OEE score of 100%, it means that you’re only manufacturing high quality parts, as quickly as you can, with as little stop time as you can manage.

Now, the most important thing to understand about all of this is that nobody achieves an OEE score of 100%. It’s not necessarily realistic given the complex nature of the manufacturing environments that you’re talking about. But the simple fact that you’re always making meaningful efforts to improve that score – to get it as high as you can – goes a long way towards making sure you’re unlocking the maximum potential of your equipment, your people and ultimately your business.

With all of that in mind, there are a variety of factors that ultimately impact your OEE score – some of which are not necessarily immediately obvious. By understanding these factors, you can mitigate risk from them as much as possible.

What Impacts OEE? Breaking Things Down

One of the major factors that will likely impact your OEE score comes down to preventative maintenance. Keep in mind that one of the things that you’re really paying attention to when it comes to OEE is all of the time used for value-added production. Absolutely anything that takes away from that should be included in your OEE calculations because you need the most complete picture to work from at all times.

Now, that’s not to say that preventative maintenance is bad – because it absolutely isn’t. Indeed, you always want to capitalize on any opportunity you have to stop a small problem now before it has a chance to become a much bigger one down the road. It’s simply that you have to face the reality of the situation – meaning that if preventative maintenance takes away from the time used for production, it needs to get included in your availability calculation.

Another factor that impacts your OEE score comes down to lunches and breaks for your employees. Again, this is true for the same reason outlined above – if those lunches or breaks take time away from your ability to unlock the full potential of your manufacturing lines, they too should become a part of your availability calculation.

But as was true with preventative maintenance, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Nor is it something you can avoid because obviously your employees deserve breaks. However, it’s still important to include them in the availability portion of your OEE calculation so that you understand where those losses are coming from, regardless of how unavoidable they may be.

In the end, OEE is about making sure you have the best information to work from when making decisions in the moment. By taking factors like those outlined above into consideration, you go a long way towards accomplishing precisely that with your OEE calculation.

One of the most important things to understand about OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) is that, while it’s undoubtedly important, it’s not a silver bullet and shouldn’t be treated as such.

That is to say, an OEE score of 100% doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re running the most efficient production line in the world – nor is an OEE score that high a realistic goal to begin with. Instead, OEE is simply a way to benchmark the meaningful progress you’re making on a daily basis. As you eliminate waste and improve efficiency, that score should be slowly but steadily increasing.

Because of that, there are a few important mistakes that you need to avoid to really extract the most insight from your OEE measurements moving forward.

The OEE Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make: An Overview

By far, the biggest mistake that organizations make when it comes to OEE involves focusing more on the score itself and less on the underlying losses.

You may measure OEE for the first time and hit a score of 90% and think to yourself that you’re in really good shape. From a certain perspective, you are – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for improvement that you can take advantage of.

The real value of OEE comes from how it helps you understand not what is currently working, but what could be working better if you take the appropriate actions. From that perspective, your scores in terms of availability, performance and quality are less important than what they reveal to you about availability losses, performance losses and quality losses.

Rather than putting all of your attention on a percentage, always try to extract something meaningful from the discussion about the sources of these losses. Once you know that, you essentially know everything you need to take steps to reduce them – thus improving the efficiency of your operations across the board.

Another mistake that you should work hard to avoid involves collecting too much data as it pertains to OEE. The beauty of OEE is in its simplicity – meaning that you need to avoid “asking too much” from your data beyond the straightforward narrative that can’t help but reveal itself. Data volumes are already exploding, to the point where businesses invest in sophisticated analytical solutions just to even attempt to make sense of it all. You don’t need to make things worse by forcing your equipment operators to essentially do two jobs at the same time.

When in doubt, keep it simple. There can absolutely be “too much of a good thing,” and huge volumes of data fall into that category. At a certain point, you’ll hit diminishing returns. Rather than collecting so much information that you become bogged down by it all, practice the old idea of “less is more.” It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.

If you’re interested in learning more about the biggest mistakes pertaining to OEE that you should be working hard to avoid, or if you’d just like to discuss your own needs with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.