How Do You Improve OEE? Strategies for Success

Productivity in Manufacturing: Identifying Areas for OEE Improvement and the Top 11 Strategies to Try

Manufacturers work hard to ensure products are created and sent out on time without raising costs or causing delays. Unfortunately, with machine downtime — planned and unplanned — this isn’t always possible. 

Without knowing your factory’s machine potential, it’s difficult to identify, monitor, and reduce the amount of loss your organization experiences, directly impacting your bottom line. 

Staying on top of preventive maintenance is a simple way to monitor assets and ensure machines are working as they should, helping to improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

Learn 11 strategies your organization can implement to help improve OEE and how using CMMS software can help.

Understanding and Defining OEE 

OEE, or Overall Equipment Effectiveness, is a “best practices” metric that measures productivity in three main parts — quality, performance, and availability. 

This method of measuring productivity identifies the percentage of planned productive time that is truly productive.

OEE Is useful as both a benchmark and a baseline for productivity. 

As a benchmark, OEE can be used to compare the performance of production assets to industry standards, similar in-house assets, or results for different people/shifts working on the same asset.

As a baseline, OEE can be used to track the overall progress of eliminating anything that does not add value to an asset. 

UpKeep, an innovative CMMS software, utilizes a preventive maintenance tool that helps today’s maintenance professionals prevent asset breakdowns before they happen, helping to maintain or improve productivity. Request a demo today.

What Is OEE in Manufacturing?

Measuring OEE is important to help manufacturers understand the percentage of operating time that is productive vs. wasted. They can use this data to identify, monitor, and reduce production losses. 

What Are the Three Components of OEE?

The three components of OEE all pertain to its score. OEE is calculated as follows:

OEE = (Good Count x Ideal Cycle Time) / Planned Production Time

However, three loss-related factors — availability, performance, and quality — must be included in this calculation to ensure a full and valid OEE score, making the preferred OEE calculation as follows:

A x P x Q = OEE

• Availability considers all events that stopped production (typically for several minutes). Ideally, manufacturers will suffer no stop time to achieve 100% availability.

• Performance considers anything that causes the manufacturing process to run at less than the maximum possible speed. 

• Quality accounts for manufactured parts that do not meet industry quality standards. 

What Is the Difference Between OEE and Performance?

Performance is just one part of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). On its own, performance is the speed a factory or its assets run compared to its ideal cycle time. You cannot determine OEE on just performance alone, and at the same time, calculating performance is a crucial part of determining OEE.

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How To Improve OEE: Implement These 11 Strategies to Increase Productivity

#1: Use Automation and Technology To Ensure Real-Time Data Collection and Reporting

Before computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), manufacturers used paper and pen to collect, document, and maintain data. 

The by-hand method is not only time-consuming and tedious, but it often causes insufficient data collection, creating a barrier to achieving higher productivity and improved OEE. 

By automating the collection and reporting of producing data using software, manufacturers can manage all assets from a mobile device, keeping reports readily available to access and implement changes if necessary. 

Real-time data — also known as processing data — is crucial for improving OEE because it offers immediate insight into productivity. 

In a quality management survey conducted by LNS Research, nearly 400 responses from manufacturing and industrial executives were recorded from a question regarding the real-time visibility of quality metrics in manufacturing. The responses indicated that those with real-time visibility outperformed those who did not utilize a real-time data capability by 6%.

With smart technology, manufacturers have immediate and hands-on control of information for their organization, using it to drive decisions much quicker than before. Not only is the data quickly in your hands, but it’s less likely to have errors than manually collected data, ensuring the manufacturing process continues timely.

#2: Perform Preventive Maintenance

Not only does performing preventive maintenance help maintenance teams avoid unwanted downtime and asset breakdowns before they happen, but utilizing preventive maintenance software helps ensure your team is always on top of your assets.

With access to full maintenance reports, manufacturers can reduce maintenance costs, saving an estimated 8-12%, by investing in preventive maintenance.

UpKeep offers preventive maintenance software to help maintenance teams improve OEE by determining the optimal frequency and timing of maintenance activities for every asset. This feature tracks the availability and performance of assets to help identify patterns and trends of wear and tear and schedule preventive maintenance accordingly. 

#3: Analyze and Document Production Stops

Understanding both when production stops occur and why they happen is key to improving OEE. Without knowing why they’re happening, you can’t do much to solve the issues leading to the stoppage.

Although stops and downtime are expected, too much can cause setbacks and affect OEE. 

Each time production stops, take time to analyze and document the instance. Notice patterns in production lines, machines, and operators to learn the what or why behind a production stop occurring. 

As a manufacturer, you know that production stops can be costly. Using software that supports OEE improvement ensures that all production stops are recorded, analyzed, and commented on.

#4: Mitigate the “Six Big Losses”

Losses are used to describe the waste that takes place during manufacturing and are primarily responsible for low OEE. By eliminating losses, manufacturers can improve overall efficiency and productivity. 

Focus on eliminating these 6 big losses that make up the basis for calculating OEE:

1. Planned stops

2. Slow cycles

3. Production rejects

4. Start-up rejects

5. Unplanned stops

6. Micro stops

#5: Use Root Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis is a problem-solving system that helps understand the core problem of every issue that arises during production. The idea is to learn what the root cause of the problem is and fix it rather than focusing on all of its symptoms. 

By getting to the root cause, you’re minimizing the chances of the same issue occurring again, and in turn, creating long-term success, helping to improve OEE. 

Here’s how root cause analysis works:

1. Define the problem.

2. Determine the cause of the problem. 

3. Find the root cause.

4. Brainstorm solutions. 

5. Create an action plan.

6. Verify and measure the effectiveness of the solution. 

These steps help identify an organization's main issues and help manufacturers examine issues closely to create a solution that prevents problems and improves productivity. 

#6: Monitor and Analyze Performance

Consider the Pareto analysis — 80% of results come from 20% of causes — meaning that a minimal number of factors generally causes the most problems or inefficiencies. 

When dealing with performance management, the idea is to apply the 80/20 principle to help identify major causes of disruptions in manufacturing processes. With your answers in place, you can focus your efforts on prioritizing the significant problems that have the greatest impact on overall performance. 

With UpKeep, you have access to many solutions to help record, monitor, and analyze performance and make decisions using data that supports your efforts.

#7: Implement Continuous Improvement Methods

Continuous improvement is a structured process put into place to help improve services, methods, and products that are ongoing. The goal is to increase efficiency, quality, and value while reducing waste.

Many management systems — Lean Six Sigma, for example — utilize continuous improvement to improve operations and outcomes. 

Here’s what’s involved:

• Analyzing performance

• Identifying opportunities for improvement

• Making incremental changes

• Measuring the impact of changes

• Sharing knowledge

• Implementing new opportunities for improvement

#8: Invest in Employees

Labor shortages are common in the manufacturing industry — the U.S. Census projects 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030 as a result of a lack of skilled labor. 

Although technology, robotics, and machine automation make some human operator jobs obsolete, many factories still require a human workforce for effective operations. 

Operators keep machines running, help minimize slowdowns and downtime, and keep processes moving to help with high OEE. 

Manufacturers should focus on investing in employees that:

• Have an opportunity for growth in the industry

• Are willing to be trained to detect issues and prevent costly breakdowns

• Can identify production problems

• Can brainstorm creative solutions to problems

#9: Reduce Downtime

Every strategy mentioned here points to the same idea — reducing downtime. The more downtime involved in production, the worse your OEE will be. 

Remember, downtime can look like many different things — planned maintenance, unplanned maintenance, setup time, production rejects — and reducing these can improve OEE. 

Here’s a tip: Determine which assets cause the greatest downtime and work to discover the main reason that downtime occurs. 

Using a reliable CMMS software like UpKeep can help with this process. By keeping these machines up and running the majority of the time, manufacturers can avoid stoppages that slow down production, in turn, improving OEE.

#10: Monitor Part Quality and Facility Conditions

Even if assets seem to be operating correctly, conditions surrounding machinery could be affecting their performance, impacting OEE. 

Facility conditions like excess debris, grease, oil, fumes, dust, poor lighting, and vibrations from machinery can all impact how operators and equipment work. In turn, low- and inconsistent-quality parts may be created. 

#11: Improve Communication and Engagement Across All Production-Related Departments

The idea here is that the more minds involved in problem-solving, the faster the rate of improvement, creating higher-quality solutions. 

Consider implementing daily sessions where you gather a representative from each department that is a part of the production process. Use this session to communicate, build relationships, and brainstorm. With higher levels of communication and engagement between all production-related departments — operators and leaders — OEE can improve. 

Harvard Business Review reports that improving employee engagement improves productivity by 22% and promotes a variety of other outcomes, including:

• Double success rates than lower-engaged organizations

• Lower absenteeism and turnover

• Fewer safety incidents

• Fewer quality incidents

• Higher sales

• Higher profitability

Let UpKeep Help Your Facility See OEE Improvement by Implementing These Strategies With Our CMMS

Is your manufacturing company struggling to improve OEE? 

Preventive maintenance is key for ensuring all assets are running effectively, minimizing:

• Slowdowns

• Production stops

• Product rejects

• And more

With UpKeep, manufacturers can stay on top of the maintenance of assets, helping to improve OEE.

Not only is UpKeep consistently rated the best inventory management software in value for money, ease of use, functionality, and customer support, but UpKeep has dozens of 5-star reviews to prove our success.

With UpKeep, manufacturers can:

• Reduce equipment and asset downtime by up to 26%

• Extend asset and equipment lifetime by up to 11%

• Achieve up to 652% ROI

• Improve overall facility conditions

Don’t wait any longer — request a demo today.

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