North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.
North America's Largest Metal Forming, Fabricating, Welding and Finishing Event
By Bryan Sapot – SensrTrx
Imagine you’re a manufacturer with a diverse product mix, meaning lots of products with a lot of customization. You would most definitely value flexibility over speed. Rather than churning out the same part over and over again at lightning speed, a focus on quality and performance would be paramount. For manufacturers like this, 100% OEE would be a bad thing.
You lose flexibility at 100% OEE
Companies with a low mix, meaning making a lot of the same parts, want a high Quality and Availability number but a lower Performance number. The lower Performance number allows them the flexibility to produce more when needed. However, when manufacturers need flexibility, they focus on Quality and Availability. 100% OEE would theoretically mean that these types of considerations are not being properly accounted for.
Availability is critically important
Nothing gets manipulated more than Availability during OEE calculations. Inside many manufacturing departments across the world, planned and unplanned downtime is manipulated to achieve a high availability number and overall OEE.
This is done so that the company can display – what is believed to be – an industry standard OEE number.; 85% seems to be a respectable number I hear a lot. This is detrimental to the way manufacturers actually affect OEE and cut costs.
Each company should pick a methodology that tracks the true availability of the machine. For example, should breaks be planned or unplanned downtime? Can the machine continue to run during the break? If so, it should be unplanned. Understanding these elements and accounting for them makes much more sense than optimizing towards a number that is arbitrary.
What is the price of quality?Quality is another area where 100% OEE could be something a manufacturer should avoid. It is not always possible or cost effective to reach 100% Quality. Ensuring every part produced is perfect and shippable in products with high raw material costs and very long cycle times – like titanium airplane parts – makes sense. However, if you have low raw material costs and a very short cycle time, a lower quality number might make sense as well.
The truth is that it depends. Focusing on 100% OEE across the board likely makes sense for no one; however, as we get more granular, focusing on increasing availability, quality or performance offers more benefits to those who know which ones matter most to their business.
The takeaway
OEE should only be used to measure a single cell or machine and not applied across the factory. Managers and executives must set reasonable OEE targets based on the desired outcome. If your outcome is to produce as many of the same product as possible, at a low cost with a low defect rate then shoot for a high OEE number. If you need flexibility to fit rush orders into your schedule or you have a high mix with a lot of customization determine the OEE number that works best to serve those needs. Comparing yourself to other businesses that have different goals is a bad strategy for just about everyone.
Hear more from Bryan in FABTECH Session F27: Introduction to IIoT & Strategies for Evaluating Industry 4.0on Monday, Nov. 6 at 10:30 AM. View session details here.
FABTECH 2024
About the Expo
North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.
