Industrial plants and manufacturers are always seeking ways to optimize their work processes and get more out of their machinery. But how do you know what’s working efficiently, and what’s not?
One of the best frameworks for measuring a facility or workplace’s performance is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Informed by the data collected by rugged industrial-grade computers, manufacturers can then make better decisions about their work processes and equipment choices.
What is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)?
Overall equipment effectiveness is a means of judging how well a piece of equipment performs, based on its speed, uptime, and output. OEE’s three primary factors are:
- Quality: Obviously, if a manufacturing machine produces defective or damaged goods, it’s useless to the operator. The quality parameter of OEE evaluates how many products are manufactured without defects or the need for rework.
- Speed: Manufacturers operating at scale need to produce goods quickly to meet the demands of the market. What constitutes speed will obviously vary from industry to industry, machine to machine. An assembly line for cars will obviously take longer to produce a finished product than a machine that makes screws, for example.
- Availability: While every machine will need to pause operations, whether due to needing maintenance or because the worker needs to go home and sleep, a consistent lack of availability due to breakdowns and maintenance needs leads to a lower OEE score.
How is OEE Determined?
A machine or plant’s OEE is scored on a scale of 0 to 100%. 100% means perfect production, with zero flaws or defects in products, performed as fast as physically possible, with zero stoppages or interruptions. On the other hand, 0% would mean no work is being done at all, or that every single product manufactured is being rejected.
Obviously, both of these scenarios are equally unlikely. No work process, no matter how refined, is 100% perfect, and a factory with zero output probably has far bigger problems to worry about. Most OEE scores fall in the range of 40 to 65%, with 85% considered a high standard to aim for. Achieving an OEE score this high often requires years of continual investment, training, and process refinement to identify and eliminate mistakes.
How Do You Monitor And Track for OEE?
Tracking your OEE requires two things:
- First, you need to understand the parameters that measure your effectiveness, such as the operational uptime you achieve and the number of units of a given product you want to manufacture in that time.
- Second, you need equipment such as industrial-grade computers and sensors that can automatically collect data within these parameters. Given the scale of modern manufacturing operations, this is far too much information to record manually.
Once you have your parameters and equipment in place, you can begin collecting and analyzing your data.
Let’s consider a hypothetical manufacturing line. This line operates for 8 hours (480 minutes) a day, with 1 hour (60 minutes) of downtime, and has an ideal cycle time of 1 minute per unit. In one eight-hour shift, the line produces 300 products: 280 are of good quality, and 20 must be rejected due to manufacturing flaws.
We can then take these numbers and compare them to the three OEE pillars.
- Availability
Actual Run Time: 480 - 60 = 420 minutes. 420/480 = 87.5%
- Speed
Speed = 300 examples produced / 420 expected examples = 71.4%
- Quality
Quality = 280/300 = 93.3%
Total OEE = 87.5% x 71.4% x 93.3% = 58.3%
A total score of 58.3% OEE. Not a terrible score, but there is definitely room for improvement, especially in terms of operational speed. In this hypothetical scenario, maybe the manufacturer needs to review their production workflow, such as how components are moved from one machine to another, or the operating speed of the machines themselves, to see if there are any inefficiencies that need addressing.
The Six Major Losses of OEE
There are six primary ways that manufacturers lose OEE:
- Equipment Failure - mechanical breakdowns, tooling failure, and unplanned maintenance.
- Setup and Adjustment Time - Time spent adjusting settings or preparing for a new workload.
- Process Defects - Defective parts produced during a stable production state.
- Reduced Yields - Defective parts produced in the time between startup and stable production.
- Idling and Minor Stops - Short stoppages in production, such as clearing misfeeds and material jams, quick cleaning, and adjusting sensors.
- Reduced Speed - Loss in productivity due to slow equipment, inexperienced operators, or inefficient workflows.
While some of these losses are simply unavoidable due to human error or flaws in the raw materials, a genuine effort to improve your OEE can reap serious rewards in terms of better operational efficiency, less time wasted between production cycles, and less waste created.
What Does OEE Monitoring Equipment Require?
To gather the data that lets you measure and analyze your OEE, you need equipment that can collect information like start and stop times, how many units are produced in a single cycle, and how many get rejected for being defective. However, this equipment needs to be specialized for industrial conditions; consumer-grade or off-the-shelf solutions won’t be sufficient.
Industrial-Grade Reliability
Any computer or sensor used in an industrial setting for OEE monitoring, especially in close proximity to running machinery, needs to be ready for the physical stresses of the environment, such as:
- Harsh vibrations and sudden shocks
- Extreme temperatures
- Dust and liquid exposure
- Electromagnetic interference
These factors can easily damage or destroy a typical consumer-grade PC. Only industrial-grade PCs that have been tested and certified under standards such as IEC 60068 should be used in near-machinery roles. Otherwise, the tools you use to improve OEE will instead negatively impact it as they break down and fail.
Multiple Connectivity Options
Drawing information from multiple sensors and machines into one device requires multiple connectivity options for that device. For industrial computers, that means a range of both modern and legacy I/O ports, so that the computer can receive information from both new and old machinery. If you don’t want to rely on a wired connection, then you will need powerful WiFi connectivity features.
Master Your OEE Monitoring with Cybernet’s Industrial Computers
By embracing overall equipment effectiveness methods, manufacturers can save money, reduce waste, and produce higher-quality goods. However, doing so requires effective information-gathering technology, supported by rugged, reliable computers designed specifically for industrial settings.
Looking to improve your OEE but need specialized computers for data collection and analysis? Contact the experts at Cybernet Manufacturing to learn how our industrial computers are the perfect fit for this role, along with machinery control, communication, and others. Our decades of experience with designing and manufacturing industrial computers mean our PCs enjoy a 0.5% failure rate, meaning they enhance your OEE, rather than detract from it.