Using XL800 for Takt Time Analysis
November 30, 2008 by adrianpask
We recently had the pleasure of meeting a team who wanted a way of preventing their Continuous Improvement Manager from spending hours with a stop watch and a unit counter on a gantry counting units on the line to identify a minor stop issue. Well….5 mins of configuration later this is the example we have created.
So - how can you use an XL800 as a portable Continuous Improvement Manager?
What we did was set the board with a desired takt time (which in this example is 1s).
We then said that:
- any cycle that’s 1s + 5% is a “slow cycle”
- any cycle that’s 1s + 25% is a “small stop”,
- anything that’s 1s + 200% is a “major stop”.
You can set these values to any numbers that you want to really tune the board to get what you want.
This then gives us the KPI screen below….which could suddenly give your Continuous Improvement Manager hours and hours of time to work on improvement projects rather than counting product!
When you decide to get an XL we can even make sure that this setup is included in your basic configuration file so you can use the system to add value straight out of the box.
Measuring OEE in the right place
November 30, 2008 by adrianpask
The Theory of Constraints (TOC):
I’ve taken this definition of TOC from Wikipedia:
“According to TOC, every organization has - at any given point in time - at least one constraint which limits the system’s performance relative to its goal (see Liebig’s law of the minimum). These constraints can be broadly classified as either an internal constraint or a market constraint. In order to manage the performance of the system, the constraint must be identified and managed correctly (according to the Five Focusing Steps below). Over time the constraint may change (e.g., because the previous constraint was managed successfully, or because of a changing environment) and the analysis starts anew.”
In a manufacturing context our role as operational managers is to identify what we ( and the business) want to achieve, identify the constraint to this, work out which measures most accurately measure our progress to this goal, and then manage that constraint accordingly.
Therefore if what you want to achieve is: “Optimise a production line to increase production output” we probably want some form of OEE or mechanical efficiency measure in our management dashboard.
If our goal is “reduce cost to produce product in an overly-capable plant” then we may want some form of cost/tonne, tonne/man-hour, or takt time/cycle time adherence metric in our management dashboard.
So let’s look at the first example and use OEE as a method of managing our constraint.
I don’t believe it’s the OEE of the constraint that you really want to know as this will just tell you what you’ve made….it won’t tell you where you need to work to improve. What you really want to know is how your losses to OEE caused the constraint to run slowly or stop.
So which part of my plant I need to get my measure from?
When you’re running individual machines it’s pretty easy to create an OEE measure for each machine. But what about if you run a series of machines connected by conveyors? Or more specially, what about getting a single OEE figure for an entire production line?
Here are a few examples of how people have measured OEE that we’ve come across over the years…and they have varying degrees of accuracy!
- Cases produced at the palletiser
- Units produced on the most expense machine
- The slowest running piece of equipment
- Raw materials consumed in the process area
- Labels applied to products
- Count at a particular machine not at the end of the line
- Averaging the OEE’s of every machine
Based on TOC the right point to have your measure is the point at which your goal is being confined. In the majority of FMCG plants that I’ve worked in with a goal if increasing output the constraint has typically been the filling machine.
So here are a few TOC questions for you:
- Do your teams know which machine or process is the real constraint to your goal?
- Are your measures targeted on this constraint (really check – I’ve visited plants in which labour is the biggest constraint only to find an OEE measure ruling the site. The outcome; few operators running few machines into the ground to get high OEE’s. Imagine now if this was an aerospace plant – surely as a potential plane passenger you’d want the primary metric to be a defect or quality metric rather than OEE!)?
- Are these measures giving you the information you need to help your teams make the right decisions to reduce loss to your goal?
Please feel free to get in contact with me if you would like to discuss this further. At OptimumFX we spend most of our time helping sites to identify the real bottlenecks to their processes, and then apply the right tools to that bottleneck to measure performance and improve decision making, We regularly help sites create manual collection processes, quick bolt on solutions such as the XL800, or fully integrated enterprise solutions such as LineView and MachineView.
XL800 and Takt Times
November 3, 2008 by adrianpask
One of the useful concepts to master in Lean Manufacturing is the concept of Takt Time.
Simply, the Takt time of a process is the maximum amount of time needed to produce a unit of a product to meet a customer demand. I like to think of the takt time of a manufacturing process as being like the “heart beat” of the line; it’s the pulse that demolishes your production plans and whacks out those units of product.
When i think of a “heart beat” a number of ideas pop into my mind - i wonder about the effect of an irregular heart beat on you or I, or perhaps a heart beat that’s too slow or too fast, or maybe a heart beat that’s been slowed down for a few days to cope with a change in the weather, or because it’s Tuesday today….no really! The great thing is that whilst this sounds like a strange thing to say about a human, we often experience it when we look at machines.
If your heart beat was erratic what would you want? I would be at my local casualty limply yet forcefully asking for an ECG pronto! Yet when we visit some factories quite often people have no idea at all that their factory heart beat, their takt times, are all over the place.
At OptimumFX we want to help you monitor the heart beat on your production line to ensure that it’s always fit and healthy. We can even help you set up alarms if the heart beat falls out of parameters to ensure that you always get the best from your machines and meet your targets.
Simply install an XL800 on your produciton line for a free trial to see a real time display of your current Takt time.
Best practice tip:
- Use your Takt time reading to set shift targets
- A great way to drive results on the plant floor is to drive production based on takt time - giving you teams the opportunity to “win” their production shifts.
Popular takt-time related KPI’s:
- Target “an automatically updated production target that increases based on takt time),
- Actual (the current production count),
- Efficiency (how far ahead of behind production is running in terms of a percentage).
