Post on OEE that caught my eye
April 13, 2009 by david.evanson
I just had this article on OEE hit my google alerts and think you may enjoy the authors thoughts on the pros and cons of OEE measurement.
What’s interesting for me is that whilst he acknowledges the power of electronic capture systems the article is very much based on manually calculated OEE.
See what you think:
The Good and Bad of OEE
David Berger, P.Eng., Contributing Editor to Plant Services, PlantServices.com
David Berger, P.Eng., contributing editor, says overall equipment effectiveness is a powerful, meaningful metric if youre aware of what it excludes.
Becoming an OEE Fitness Instructor
April 5, 2009 by david.evanson
What do OEE improvement and the gym have in common?
- They both involve training people to carry out activities which in the short term they may not understand or even enjoy with the intention of realising a longer term beneficial outcome - be it less downtime, or the ability to walk up the stairs without running out of breath.
So to explain how this is relevant let me take you through the process that most good quality gyms will take you through when you join:
Your Gym Fitness Instructor:
- You meet an instructor who chats about why you’re there, helps you to identify your desired outcomes, and helps you to create a rough plan of your objectives.
- The instructor takes you to the first machine. Tells you what it does and how it works. The instructor then gets on the machine and demonstrates some repetitions
- You get on the machine and repeat what the instructor did. The instructor coaches and guides you till they’re happy you can repeat without them.
- Repeat for each machine on your programme.
- At the end of the tour the instructor checks that you’re happy, completes your plan with you, and tells you when they’ll review progress.
- Some time in the next couple of weeks the instructor catches up with you and reviews progress. Helps you with any difficulties and may fine tune the programme.
- Final review and programme tweak for the next stage
Your Traditional Manufacturing Manager:
- You need to do this because it’s in your objectives/we have to meet an order/we’re in the brown stuff.
- Do you understand?
- Yes brilliant, get on with it come to me if you have a problem.
- Review…hmmm our OEE is still the same. Why aren’t we getting the results that we want? Must be something wrong with………(start listing excuses here).
Be honest - is your method of getting your team to act
differently more like example 1 or example 2?
What would be the impact on our teams if we were to spend
more time as OEE Fitness Instructors and less time as managers?
Look how easy an XL800 installation is!!!
April 2, 2009 by david.evanson
We think you’ll like this - XL800 is SUCH an easy easy installation you really can get it working in hours…and in most instances we only need 3 cables wired to the board.
It really is that easy!
Literally within hours of taking it out of the box you will:
- Be monitoring your OEE
- Be monitoring your takt time and cycle times
- Be upgrading your Andon lamps with USEFUL downtime alerts not just flashing lights
- Be monitoring your total output
- Be monitoring your 3 losses to OEE - availability, quality, and performance
And this is before you even put it on your production network and start entering targets and using the other really cool features…and we haven’t even started on what you could do with the full 22 inputs we have available.
To prove just how easy the installation is, check out this pdf link below - it will show you where to take you count sensors from and the 3 cables you need to start getting great results.
Click here for the pdf link for your XL800 installation
To clarify here’s a summary of what we can give you straight out of the box:
OEE analysis signals and inputs
Plant View with XL800 OEE Systems - coming soon!
April 2, 2009 by david.evanson
Introducing our new OEE Factory Dashboard: Plant View with XL800 OEE Systems
- Would it be useful if you could look at one screen and see a summary of your entire plant OEE?
- Is it important to you to instantly know in real time how well your entire plant is running?
- Imagine how much easier it would be to allocate resource to your worse performing areas…
Now you can with our brand new “Plant View” screen
When you have multiple XL800 OEE Systems installed on your network you can instantly see the real time performance of each machine in one handy factory dashboard.
If you’re a Production Manager or an Engineering Manager you can now see the real time performance of your plant on one screen without even leaving your desk!!!
Naturally we’ll be offering this upgrade free of charge to all existing customers and will contact you directly to pass on this great new feature towards the end of April.
Click on the picture below to see it full screen:
View Multiple XL800 OEE systems on one page
As ever, we are keen to recieve your feedback - let me know what you think about this new addition.
OEE and equipment commissioning
March 30, 2009 by david.evanson
Are you thinking about investing in new production line equipment?
Would you like to avoid having your OEE demolished in the process?
Here are our 5 top tips for minimising the length of time that your line is down for the install:
1. Agree to use automated electronic measures to sign off the new equipment - most equipment suppliers we meet are very happy to sign off large projects using tick sheets and manual observation both of which are subject to significant errors. Use PLC data for the commissioning exercise - when/should the OEM argue that the numbers are incorrect at least you know that their PLC code is also incorrect!
2. Agree the range of performance metrics well in advance including a total line metric for the trial.
3. The industry standards are Mechanical Efficiency and Running Speed. We would also recommend insisting on: Mean Time Between Failure, Mean Time To Recover, OEE (Availability, Performance, Quality), and Loss to Critical/bottleneck Machine.
4. XL800 systems are extremely useful for signing off new equipment as they can be installed in a matter of hours with a completely standard setup - just bolt it on, plug it in, run the machine, and there’s your sign-off data generated completely automatically.
5. Make sure you consider the line control - we’ve seen many installations in which new equipment is installed with only the absolute minimum line control adjustments. Typically this can kill as much as 5% of your total line efficiency. Very shortly we will post our Line Control philosophy to support you here.
We’ve been involved in the commisioning of everything from individual machine upgrade to full multi-million pound production lines and hope that these simple tips help you with your install.
Incidentally i’ve just spotted this blog which also has a great post on this topic: Click Here
Your biggest OEE mistake?
March 26, 2009 by david.evanson
So you’re measuring OEE and breaking out some of the losses - do you want to know one of the biggest mistakes i believe sites make at this point?
I believe that one of the biggest mistakes people regularly make is that they don’t measure the accuracy of their data.
What does this mean? Well it means that you are potentially taking action on highly inaccurate data with absolutely no idea of how inaccurate it is! In reality the chances are that your team are fudging the numbers so that they always add up to 100%. If you doubt me do this: Walk out onto the line and discretely observe how many minor stops are accurately recorded by the operator. Look at the tick sheets - how many of your stops are nice round numbers; 1min, 5min, 15min?
Whilst our MachineView and XL systems get 100% accuracy on a single asset when it comes to calculating losses on an entire production line even our LineView system which is an extremely accurate fully-automated causal downtime system only averages 98% efficiency on a complex line!
Whenever we work out an OEE number we look for:
1. Completed production
2. Maximum theoretical production
3. Mins attributed to downtime
4. Unallocated downtime
If I ever see an OEE calculation with 100% accuracy then i would lay £50 on the table that someone is fudging the numbers at some point. This is because most manual systems get calculated at the end of the shift - your 4hr of non-production time is assigned to whatever downtime reason codes the team want.
For good quality information you need to know not only how many mins of downtime were captured…but how many were missed out as well.
Struggling to improve?
March 23, 2009 by david.evanson
Something that struck me the other day was how many sites have had Lean Initiative-itis over the years.By this i mean that they’ve tried to implement various of lean/quality/OEE activities, some internally, some with consultants but for some reason they’ve struggled to improve.
I’m sure we all recognise the symptoms - branded literature up on the walls from past consultant-supported activity, semi-filled in paperwork, practices in place that exist due to habit rather than the value that they add, a weariness from the folks on the factory floor when it comes to ‘another funny acronym’.
I know things are bad when we talk to an operator about “quick changeovers” and they tell me they know all about that “SMED stuff”…..as they start a 6 hour changeover. Or if every front line manager i talk to has 9-5 meetings every day, or when i walk a line and see more than 1 noticeboard…and it’s out of date.
Here’s something that i have come to believe - the Lean toolkit contains some great tools for reducing waste and improving OEE and there still comes a point in my opinion where “if you can’t change the people, change the people”.
Far too often i see implementations that are attempted from a very genuine desire to improve yet with poor people-management support. Quite often in sites that are in this place there are fantastic performance management tools available and they’re not being used.
When we look at the sites that we know get the most sustainable performance one thing they all have in common is that there is a robust performance mangagement system in place and being implemented in full on a daily basis.
If you’re introducing any sort of change process (lean, an OEE drive, a quality drive) here are my thoughts on how to be successful:
1. Make it personal - people have to care. Make sure they have an emotional reason for doing this…make sure YOU have an emotional reason for doing this.
2. You can’t build a strong house on a weak foundation - get the basics right first; ensure that you have a people performance management system in place AND WORKING!
3. If you have the wrong person in the wrong role then you’re not helping them or yourself…they’re probably miserable. Use your tools to help them find a role where they can be happy and productive. This happened to me early in my corporate career and i look back with huge gratitude to the director who did this with me in such an open and supportive manner.
4. “Aces in Places”: Make your best people responsible for creating change and get them to coach your rising stars
5. Ensure that your implementation team have precise objectives for this implementation and that they are linked to personal performance objectives
6. Carry out regular documented reviews to coach on performance and provide guidance/focus
7. Follow up on all actions that come from the reviews
8. Hold people to account for implementing the change: Reward for success and use your performance management tools if the project is floundering
As ever - delighted to welcome your feedback as these are simply my ideas post a 2 hour workout on Monday evening! So fill out the box below and let me know what you think.
Planning Optimisation
February 27, 2009 by samirshah
Why Optimise Planning?
Traditional view of industry - Push the products out into the market
- - Keep producing even when there is no demand
- - Keep the factory running all the time
- - Keep lots of stock
Lean approach - Demand from the market pulls products
- - Only produce what you can sell
- - Don’t produce to hold in stock
- - Keep minimum/no stock levels
“To keep a balance between reducing overall warehousing costs and be able to satisfy varying demand (e.g. seasonal) as well as maximise availability at the production facility companies utilise both the push and pull approach”
For this reason it is necessary to pay particular importance to optimising production planning.
There have been conflicting views between the corporate strategy for planning and the site strategy for what should be planned. The reason for this is related to how the departments are measured and targeted. At the corporate level it is all about reducing cost and increasing the flexibility to deliver where as at site level it is all about maximising performance measures such as OEE. This leads to very little synergy and a lot of animosity between the corporate planning department and the site production department.
The ultimate aim should be to deliver the products at the right time, at the right price and at the required quality to the customer.
At the corporate level there needs to be an understanding about the plant/line capability. This is the actual delivery capacity of the line. The key element to understand is that if the number of products to be made is large the actual availability to produce will be low reducing the actual capacity due to the number of changeovers required. To have the maximum capacity available, there needs to be a strategy to have as many long runs of product as possible and minimise need of the changeovers as much as possible.
At the site level, there needs to be an understanding that there are requirements to produce small runs of certain products due to their demand profile and to keep the warehousing costs low. Once the amount of products to be made is received from central planning, the site scheduling department needs to look at scheduling the production runs that will maximise the line availability by looking at combining production runs that are required at different times and by looking at minimising changeover times by scheduling product runs that require minimum operations (therefore time) to changeover. The site can look at ways to optimise their changeovers by implementing quick changeover programmes such as SMED and by looking at technology and innovation to eliminate changeovers all together between different product runs.
Therefore to summarise:
- Understand what product types are runners, repeaters and strangers - Please read an article on “The Reflective Supply Chain in Manufacturing” By John Hicks and Patrick Lee
- Decide on minimum buffer (stock) quantity for each product type
- Determine production batch size of each when minimum stock quantity is reached - this may vary on future demand and seasonality
- Put together a production plan to make products that have reached their minimum stock quantity - decide between product mix and volume required by taking into account plant/line capability with a view to maximise plant/line availability
OEE on a flow line - installing your XL800 OEE system
January 28, 2009 by david.evanson
One question that comes up quite regularly when i’m demonstrating the XL800 OEE System is: “How can i get the most from an XL800 OEE System when i have more than 1 machine that i want to measure?“.
If you have 1 machine that you want to monitor, or a simple block process, the location for your XL800 OEE System is extremely obvious - you install it on either the single machine, or (and) in an area where the operators can see it easily as per this example:
XL800 OEE System on a single machine
How to get the most from XL800 OEE System on a Continuous Flow line:
If you have run a continuous flow line (typical of most food, drink, confectionary manufacture) then when we talk about XL most manufacturers say: “We want to install this on the bottleneck machine, and we also want to analyse the other machines on the line”. This presents us with a couple of technical issues; firstly XL800 is optimised to provide detailed analysis of a single machine, secondly as part of analysing a single machine you would need our LineView system to analyse the “causal downtime” i.e. the effect of your other machines on the bottleneck machine. Secondly it presents an operational issue: I know many sites that try to collect everything but don’t act on the data, and they don’t improve. To drive your OEE up - collect only what you need, as simply as possible, and act on it vigorously.
So here’s a work-around that i outline in this scenario:
- Install the XL800 OEE system on your Bottleneck machine as normal
- Install a “lack of product” signal from your infeed conveyor. This signal machines that your bottleneck machine is available to run but cannot run due to lack of product = upstream stoppage.
- Install a “build back” signal from your outfeed conveyor. This signal machines that your bottleneck machine is available to run but cannot run due to build back of product on the outfeed = downstream stoppage
- Install whatever additional faults you want on your bottleneck machine and other machines
How this will help:
- You will know the efficiency and downtime on your bottleneck machine, which is crucial
- You will know that of all the time the bottleneck is not running, how much of that time is due to upstream or downstream issues, rather than the machine just being not available.
XL800 OEE System on a Flow Line
With this information i would:
- Carry out a Short Interval Control every hour or 2 hours - SEE MY POST ON THIS HERE
- If the greatest loss to my bottleneck machine is lack or buildback then i would identify which machine has caused that loss, and why.
- If i can’t identify why or the root cause, I would put a manual tick sheet on that machine for 1 hour only and ask the operator to get some good quality downtime data.
- I would fix the root cause and review my downtime loss to the bottleneck machine
- Repeat
In my opinion one of the greatest pitfalls that a site can fall into is “I want to collect everything right now”. I promise you that if you try to collect everything you will either collect rubbish by spreading your resource to thin, or you will not be able to take action because you’re reviewing data. Collect only what you need to improve and act on it vigorously.
The more simple and elegant your initial solution, the greater the likelihood of it adding value.
OEE Journey from OptimumFX
January 26, 2009 by david.evanson
Introducing the OptimumFX OEE Journey:
One of the questions we often bounce around as a team is; “We’ve all heard of ‘The Toyota Way’, so what is ‘our way’? What is the UK FMCG way?”.
This question has pointed us in one direction - there isn’t one….so let’s create it! We’re calling this way the: “OptimumFX OEE Journey”.
Click here to download OptimumFX OEE Journey
A little bit of background: Over the last 7-8 years we’ve been developing systems such as LineView, MachineView, and more recently the XL800 OEE system, and fine tuning the processes that you can use alongside our systems to get great results. We’ve used these processes to support some of the biggest FMCG brands in the UK to get some great results.
As we move into 2009, our objective this year will be to publish these processes, document our OEE Journey, and to make our OEE systems as readily available to you as possible.
Our goals for the OptimumFX OEE Journey in 2009 are:
- Throughout 2009 OptimumFX will be publishing a number of white papers and articles to consolidate our theories for OEE improvement.
- We will be working with a number of UK Manufacturers to jointly test and publish the results from our implementations.
- Our goal is that if you want to improve OEE, we want you to be able to pick up our systems and theories, and apply them straight away.
What does this mean for you?:
- We will share our OEE Journey completely free of charge - just sign up to this blog for more details.
- XL800 OEE System trials: You can get Free Trials of our XL800 OEE Systems. Free trial of great data completely free - we’ll even help you create robust processes to get results straight away. At the end of free trial either give the system back, or buy it.
- LineView trials: Every year we intend to give one site a copy of LineView on a 6 month free trial. This year we’re working in collaboration with the “Best Factory” team from Cranfield School of Management to deliver this project. To find out more and apply follow this link: http://www.optimumfx.com/freelineview/index.html
- Or download our LineView trial document: Click here to download the LineView Trial Offer
