3 Simple steps to getting started with XL800
July 27, 2010 by adrianpask
3 Simple steps to get your XL800 OEE System system working:
Step 1: Connect XL800 OEE System to your process
Step 2: Configure XL800 OEE System for immediate operation
Step 3: View your production in real-time
Designed for speed and simplicity – Provided ready-to-go with a standardised program
Customizable – not custom
You need to reduce downtime, but where do you start?
November 25, 2009 by adrianpask
A great place to start is focusing on your top five sources of down time. Meet with your team, pick one of the five, and brainstorm countermeasures. Next, implement the most promising countermeasures and monitor their effectiveness. Then – do it again.
XL800 makes it easy by providing you with a complete, ready-to-go solution for down time analytics that is so fast to implement you can be up and running in hours.
What are my top sources of down time? XL800 presents your top sources of down time in a simple to understand format.
How do I capture the data? XL800 automatically senses when your line goes down. Your operators simply scan a bar code for the reason. In fact, XL even generates the bar codes for you – right from its web interface. No software to install. No special printers.
How do I know if my countermeasures are working? XL800 automatically generates a trend line that clearly shows if down time is truly being reduced. You can view total down time from a historical perspective, or drill down to evaluate trends for specific down time reasons.
What else can I do? XL800 is a complete performance management solution. It provides automated, accurate real-time manufacturing
intelligence to everyone in your plant. It includes a production scoreboard that motivates your employees to “win” their shift and it
delivers web-based live production information to supervisors and managers – wherever they are.
How long does it take to install? XL800 is easy. It bolts onto your existing production process and you can be literally up and running
in hours. Instant gratification is a wonderful thing!
How much does it cost? XL800 is a great value. The flagship XL800 is £2,910 (including a deluxe plant floor scoreboard). And every
model includes our comprehensive down time tracking solution, along with other great features such as the Total Production Timeline™,
the All Production View, live reporting, OEE tracking, and much more.
What’s the next step? Here are some great options:
- Call me at +44 (0) 7545 429633 – we’ll address your specific challenges.
- Start a FREE trial – try XL800 in your plant with full OptimumFX technical support.
- Schedule an online meeting – see XL800 in action.
- Download an Executive Summary – show XL800 to your team
Pinpoint your production losses
November 22, 2009 by adrianpask
Are you tired of working with sketchy and out-of-date production information? Are you frustrated because you know your lines can do better? Do you need an effective way to get your operators involved?
The XL800 Productivity Appliance exposes production losses in real-time and motivates your operators:
XL800 is easy. It can be installed by your team, so there are no expensive integration charges. We provide a simple installation guide and free technical support - all the tools you need for a fast and easy install.
XL800 is a great value. Our complete solution includes a rugged plant floor visual display, data warehouse and integrated performance management suite, £2910. You can even try it FREE!
What’s the next step?
- Call me at +44 121 447 8520 (we’ll focus right away on solving your biggest challenges)
- Start a FREE trial (try XL800 in your plant with OFX technical support)
- Request an online meeting (see XL800 live and in action)
- Download an Executive Summary (learn more and show XL to your team)
How can an OEE System help me improve?
September 13, 2009 by adrianpask
This is one of the main questions that we repeatedly get asked.
- So you want to record your OEE properly, how will this help me to improve?
- Or more to the point what happens if i install you system and i don’t improve?
To me there are 4 levels of use with a system such as XL to improve OEE:
1. Using the display to reduce reaction time on the line
- On a 55% line: typically 3-4% increase in efficiency based on reduced reaction time.
- This is achieved through setting up meaningful messages on the XL unit that teams react to in real time. E.g. If you regularly stop due to lack of raw materials have XL come up with a “low materials” alert prior to the machine stopping. Or perhaps program in your top 3-4 faults and have XL display a message when they occur to save precious time fault finding when the machine stops.
2. Using the reporting to carry out a structured review every 2 or 4 hours
- On a 55% line: The real area of improvement – between 3%-15% improvement through better allocation of resource during the shift
- Every 4 hours your team leader and line engineer review performance for the last 4 hours and identify what fixes need to be made to increase performance in the next 4 hours.
3. Using the reporting to carry out a structured review every 24 hours
- On a 55% line: When used with above – between 3%-10% improvement through better CI project allocation
- Review how effective the 4hr reviews were, what actions need to be picked up as a bigger project? Which teams perhaps need some coaching or support?
4. Using the reporting to carry out a structured review every week
a. On a 55% line: When used with above – between 3%-5% improvement ironing out persistent issues
When we have applied all 4 of these processes we’ve achieved OEE uplifts on 50-60% lines of between 6-8% in the first six months building to over 20% in 24 months.
In these instances the increase has been supported through a reasonable level of support and coaching (sometimes from us, sometimes done internally). The ’secret’ to success here is focus; focus on being completely dedicated to creating the processes that will work for you and your teams and not accepting any distraction that pulls you from this.
To give you a sense for how we recommend you do this:
- Typically we would work on a pilot line to create a robust process and then rollout. To get the best results we create operational champions at the level of the Factory and Operations Manager – if those people know how to use a system I guarantee the rest of the site learn very quickly!
I think that it’s entirely reasonable to expect that you would get between 3%-5% OEE improvement with very little support from us at all just based through raising awareness to downtime. If you really want to get benefit from XL I would suggest building in the relevant management review processes to ensure that the system is used regularly.
Getting results with action
September 13, 2009 by adrianpask
The improvement of production performance is achieved through the combination of great quality data, robust management review, and the application of operator and technical skills and experience.
Therefore: I.F. you ACT you get RESULTS
Whereby (Information x Focus) x Actions = Results
The formulae suggests:
Inaccurate information = poor results
Inadequate focus = poor result
Low no. of decisions / actions = poor results
If you act you get results
Defining what you really want:
Information = Using XL800 at a tactical level – understanding the real root cause of your biggest losses
Focus = Man hours focusing on information that lead to decision making – or number of tactical performance reviews combined with the number of people involved
Actions = Commitment to a high number of speedily executed mix of maintaining, proactive (changing) and updating actions
MANAGE AND MEASURE THE INPUTS AND THE RESULTS ARE GUARANTEED!
Measuring the inputs:
Information – number of top losses identified that are effecting OEE and getting to the root causes
Focus – number of tactical and strategic reviews taking place and the number of relevant individuals involved
Actions – the number of type 1, 2 and 3 actions taking place
When these three areas are aligned then Results are inevitable. The data could be collected manually at the end of each shift and put into Excel (or similar), however the ultimate, is to have electronically collected pinpoint accurate data that is available in real time, from each machine. This data can then be analysed and displayed on the shop floor, in team meeting rooms, in fact anywhere in the manufacturing facility.
Updated introduction to XL800 OEE System
June 8, 2009 by adrianpask
We’re delighted to announce that we’ve now released a whole batch of additional functionality for our XL800 OEE System….and the great news is that we’re making this update available to all customers completely free of charge.
With our new update you can:
1. View all your XL800 OEE Systems in a unique Factory Dashboard - you will be able to instantly see which lines/machines need your instant attention.
2. Capture detailed fault diagnostics - using our new visual “Total Production Timeline” not only will you see what downtime you’ve had, you’ll be able to see when it happened and what it cost you
3. Detailed fault analysis - with our integrated pareto analysis tools you will instantly be able to see your top reasons for downtime today, yesterday, this month, last month at the touch of a button.
View these features and more:
Video introduction to XL800 Reporting
May 25, 2009 by adrianpask
In the video clip below you’ll find a 5 minute introduction to the XL800 OEE System Reporting features. This is our first video feature so we would massively welcome your feedback!
Choosing an OEE system
April 30, 2009 by adrianpask
I’ve recently been following the Elsmar.com Forum for manufacturing improvement and there’s a post on there asking what to consider for an OEE data capture system. Having spent some time responding i’ve decided to be lean and use the same content on my blog! Let me know what you think!
Oh a quick thought (i’m writing this after finishing everything else!) - here’s an idea of what an OEE system should be: “A good data capture system is simply a robust resource allocation tool”. Whatever you do it should lead directly to people doing something differently as a result of using the data. Now you can probably ignore everything else i’ve written below…and feel free to read on!
If i may offer some advice it would be in the following areas:
1. Identify where the constraint is in your process
2. Identify the measure that not only tells you the extent of the constraint, but what the contributing factors to loss are
3. Understand the metric, automate it and train people thoroughly. Get their buy in and support.
4. Establish a robust management review methodology based on the metric - hence the need for automation; an automated process frees up your management team to fix the losses not spend all their time calculating them.
1. Identify the constraint:
If i may offer some advice it would be to help identify what your objective for recording the data might be. Whatever you choose to record i would recommend that it measures the constraint in your manufacturing process. If your constraint is a mechanical one - i.e. to produce more produce you just need to run a machine more/get less stops then OEE is a great measure for you. If however, your constraint is relieved by hiring more people, or more generally your constraint is labour based then i would steer you towards more of a man hour / tonne type metric. By the way an XL800 System can measure both very easily - how would you like a real time £/tonne measure displayed on the factory floor?
2. The correct measure:
The value to OEE is not that you get an OEE number. You’ve made what you’ve made - there’s little point in reviewing it. I visit so many sites that can tell me their OEE but can’t tell me where their losses are. The value to measuring OEE is in the categorisation of loss. If you know the loss you can apply the right tool to fix.
E.g. for OEE:
3 Loss: Quality, Performance, Availability
6 Loss: Speed, minor stops, major stops, quality in process, quality on startup, planned downtime.
If you have a planned downtime loss apply smed techniques. If you have a minor stop loss apply kaizan blitz techniques. The value is not the OEE number - it’s the collection and categorisation of the loss that counts!
3. Understand and train:
There are 2 main schools of thought on the collection of OEE data. One is the manual school that says it’s better for operators to collect so that they understand and you get the ‘real losses’. The other is the automated school that says it’s better to get the correct data and then work out the real losses later.
An automated system only ever tells you symptoms for your downtime - its diagnostics are only so good as the signals you give it. That said, how often has an operator identified the real root cause for a stop - 9.9 times out of 10 they’ll note down a symptom.
My personal belief is that it’s better to use an automated system that captures your losses accurately…and then use management process and review to drill down. Manual data systems like the ones you’ve listed take a lot of work to maintain and i have yet to find one that’s accurate to >60% simply due to the nature of human data capture.
Therefore i sit firmly in the second school and am capable of installing a system that correctly identifies loss on canning/bottling/packing lines running at >30,000units/hour to accuracies of over 98%.
The message here is again back to objectives - what do you want to achieve. Whichever root you choose involve your teams. I remember installing a system in a bottling plant in which the operator came up to me and said “this is crap, all crap. I’ll show you - i’ll find all the problems with your system”. It was brilliant! He was the best snagger i’ve ever met. I just took all his feedback and fixed it all. After a month he had to admit the system was good because he’d commissioned it for me! Now stop him from training everyone else on ‘his system’!
4. Robust process:
A system is ONLY so good as how it’s used. You could spend £10 or £180,000 on a system. If you don’t use it you’ll get the same result and the same payback.
We often support people to establish robust internal processes for using the data, documenting the actions that arise from interrogating the data, and then a management review process for driving change. Typically this looks as follows:
1. 24hr daily reviews - looking at 24hr data. Objective is to identify what actions are still open, see if we have any reoccurring issues, assign resource where needed.
2. 4hr Short Interval Control - a regular review (initially at 4 hr intervals, moving to 2) with front line management and engineers. 1st objective is to identify greatest loss from last window of time and ensure closed off. 2nd objective is to identify what needs to be done differently in the next window of time based on the data currently available.
3. A variety of strategic review - looking at trended data for maintenance, engineering, planning, forecasting etc.
Remember - your level of payback is directly related to how you use the data.
So what OEE system works? Whichever one you commit to using fully. My advice would be to look beyond a software download as i think you may struggle to use it fully simply as it’s reliant on manual data collection. That said, i’ve created and implemented several of these in the past on sites performing at between 25-40% OEE and got great results.
Also if you’re running at <45% my belief is that you don’t need to spend a fortune collecting data because you’re line is down for 4 hours in every 8. People know where the issues are because they’re in them! But when you head up into the 65%+ territory you’ll struggle to continue improving without robust automated data capture.
Free Trial Plan
April 21, 2009 by adrianpask
The most frequent question we get about an XL800 OEE System implementation is:
“What am i going to be able to achieve?”
For us the honest answer to that question is “that depends on how much you use the system” which is not the most helpful answer in the world.
So to give you a better sense of what’s achievable in your free trial we’ve created this month-by-month guide to your XL800 OEE System implementation:
Click here to download the PDF Document: xl800-3-month-plan
Look how easy an XL800 installation is!!!
April 2, 2009 by adrianpask
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
