What is OEE?

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is a metric for measuring and monitoring how efficient your manufacturing processes are. It is also commonly used as a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) in conjunction with LEAN manufacturing efforts to provide an indicator of success.

Ideally machines would work 100% of the time at 100% capacity and with 100% good quality. This is however, rarely the case and the losses made between the actual and ideal are identified with an OEE solution. These losses can be put into three categories which distil complex production data into simple understandable metrics that provide a gauge for measuring manufacturing efficiency.

The three categories are

• Availability: measures losses from downtime; events that stop planned production for an amount of time.
• Performance: measures losses from slow cycles; where the machines are not operating as quickly as they can.
• Quality: measures losses from parts manufactured that do not meet with quality standards.

OEE aims to reduce the losses associated with metric categories above. These losses are called the 6 Big Losses. In order to address the losses, accurate data is important. By automating your data collection and presenting it in a visual manner, you will enable employees to take action against these losses as they occur. Real time figures will also allow employees to evaluate their own performance based on existing standards.

The 6 Big Losses

Loss Categories	The 6 Big Losses
Availability	Equipment Failures Setup and Adjustment
Performance	Idling and Minor Stoppages Reduced Speed Operations
Quality	Scrap and Rework Start up Losses

How to Calculate OEE

OEE is simply a ratio which has taken into account the three metric categories, thereby giving you a percentage for your overall efficiency. In order to calculate the Availability, Performance, Quality and OEE you will need to gather production data from your manufacturing process. The ICONICS OEE Solution will gather this data automatically, removing the need for manual data collection.

World Class OEE

Ideal OEE percentages for discrete manufacturers are considered to be 85%. What is your OEE percentage? OEE clearly highlights the room for improvement in your process. ICONICS OEE can help you access your data giving you real-time OEE calculations from the shop floor to the top floor. See our online savings calculator to get an idea of how much you can save.