New Year New Objectives? New Year New Actions!!!
January 7, 2009 by david.evanson
Hello and welcome back from your Christmas and New Year Holidays. All the team here at OptimumFX hope that you have had a fantastic break and are back in your factories feeling charged up and invigorated after the break.
On Monday we had our first team meeting of 2009 and one of our favourite topics of conversation came up quite early in the day: “how to convert ideas to improvement”….yes we were initially talking about New Year Resolutions! For me, there’s something quite special about that time between Christmas and New Year that gives me the chance to think a little bit differently about what i want to achieve in the next 12 months. Perhaps you may also have some fresh ideas and objectives as a result of the holiday?
If this is the case, may i ask a question? As we come to the end of the first week in January how are you progressing with your resolutions? How happy are you with your progress?
When we talk about OEE and productivity improvement we often talk to our customers about this formula:
(Information x Focus) x Action = Results
Simply, if you want to achieve great results you need to have the right data to track your progress and identify your issues, the right level of focus and commitment to reviewing performance, and then (and this is the most important part), you have to take action!
So if you’re not happy with your progress perhaps it might be worth asking yourself:
1. What information can i use to track my progress?
- This may be a KPI sheet, or an internal feel of progress, or customer reviews, or feedback from your colleagues, or a move in your financials. How specific and clear is your objective - we’ll talk another time about how to set well defined objectives and i’m sure most of you may have seen the SMART acronym (Specific…and positive, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely)
2. What level of focus am i applying to the data?
- Do i want to review this data weekly/Monthly/Quaterly? How am i going to hold myself to account for making the data important, for making it get used? How am i going to follow up on actions?
3. Take action!
- The easiest way to get a 50% improvement in OEE is to improve 50 little things by 1%….yet so many people look for some sort of magic solution that fixes one issue by 50%. Lots of little actions over a year = A MASSIVE CHANGE.
Or you could be one of those people who regularly has some fantastic, inspiring, motivating, dynamic ideas….and then sits on them: Not achieving results, not changing, not committing to action, and not getting what you want.
More ideas for your XL OEE System
October 27, 2008 by david.evanson
1. When a production line reaches their goal for the Shift, display a Congratulations message or graphic.
2. When breaks or lunches move around a lot, remove them from the time schedule and instead use a manual input to set the unit to Standby (break) mode.
3. Use the relay output to sound a horn when a break starts and ends.
4. Display an hourly goal and hourly count to keep production on track.
5. In some applications, to get better data accuracy customers do not want the unit to decide if the line is running or down. Instead, they will use a relay contact that is closed if the line is running and open is the line is idle. This relay contact is wired to one of our inputs which will trigger a program to place the unit into Run or Down mode depending on the condition of the signal.
6. Use a time schedule to set the Takt time, Ideal cycle time, and Shift Goal to different values based on the production shift.
7. Display downtime as a monetary value. Money sometimes produces more of an impact than time.
8. Display the last shifts production as a motivation for the current shift.
9. Keep track of production records and display a congratulations message when it is surpassed.
10. Display a Changeover Goal time value as well as the current Changeover time to remind the operator of the requirement.
11. Change the Takt time, Ideal Cycle time, and Goal based on the number of operators on the line.
12. In plants where multiple languages are used, alternate between multiple screens of data using the different languages (English/Spanish).
13. In some applications (Printing presses) the line speed is more important to the operators than the actual count. For these applications, the Goal speed would be displayed with the actual speed changing color based upon reaching the Goal.
14. In some cases, customers use the unit as a simple display. For example, they already have a PLC on the production line which has all of the production data they are interested in. In this case, the PLC can be programmed to transmit the production data serially to the XL display.
