Manufacturin gcompanies invest heavily in capital equipment and resources to optimize their operations. To ensure the maximum return on these investments, key performance indicators such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) are utilized. However, on the shop floor, operators often prioritize individual metrics contributing to OEE over the aggregate score itself.
This article explores the significance of OEE and highlights the need for relevant and user-friendly information for shop floor workers to enhance productivity and operational excellence.
The Importance of OEE Metrics
OEE, consisting of availability, efficiency, and quality components, serves as a crucial measure for manufacturing productivity and operational excellence. It provides vital information to executives for decision-making regarding equipment purchases, outsourcing needs, capacity planning, pricing, and costs. Additionally, middle management and supervisors rely on OEE data to make training decisions, determine staffing requirements, troubleshoot line issues, ensure inventory levels, and plan production schedules. While management typically acknowledges the value of measuring and tracking OEE, the challenge lies in conveying its significance effectively to shop floor workers.
Addressing Information Overload: The Role of User-Friendly OEE Software
Shop floor workers are primarily focused on meeting production targets efficiently during their shifts. Therefore, excessive information unrelated to their tasks can lead to information overload and negatively impact job performance. Recent research by Basex, an expert in workplace technical issues, reveals that 91% of US workers admit to discarding work-related information without reading it. The cost of information overload is staggering, causing a minimum of $900 billion per year in reduced employee productivity and innovation. Simplifying information and providing relevant data to the right people at the right time is essential in the fast-paced manufacturing environment.
Worximity offers OEE software that collects real-time production floor data through sensors attached to manufacturing equipment or connected to a machine's Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). This software presents data that maps actual production against targets, providing management with an overview of plant performance and key metrics such as OEE. Simultaneously, shop floor workers gain access to relevant information about their shifts and production days through user-friendly dashboards for each connected production line.
Empowering Shop Floor Workers with the Right Information
Worximity's OEE software enables shop floor operators to monitor their throughput, production speed, the reason, timing, and duration of line stoppages, as well as reject quantities. While these metrics contribute to OEE, they are presented in real-time in a format that operators can easily understand a mid the chaos on the shop floor. By focusing on their specific performance goals, operators can maximize their efficiency and contribute to overall production targets.
As with any new technology, the adoption and engagement of OEE monitoring solutions grow with time. The more production monitoring is used, the more it becomes ingrained in the shop floor's DNA, leading to increased accountability, upskilling, and continuous improvement. By presenting OEE data that is relevant to each user, Worximity's software provides stakeholders with the necessary information to motivate them toward achieving better results.
In a recent Industry Week article, Avago Technologies Sr. Mechanical Engineer, Jim Leflar, said “The trouble with a simple line performance metricis that it doesn’t tell you where your losses are. It may tell you that you’re operating at 80% or 90% of perfect, but you would have to look beyond the metric to analyze your losses. I use OEE more as a concept than as a line performance metric. We use it to teach people what loss is and how to look for it on their line.”
Keep it Relevant!
Maximizing manufacturing efficiency and achieving operational excellence requires effective utilization of OEE metrics and user-friendly monitoring solutions. By providing shop floor workers with relevant and easily understandable information, companies can empower their operators to contribute to overall production goals.
Worximity's OEE software offers a comprehensive solution to collect real-time data, improve performance, and drive continuous improvement. Embracing OEE as an improvement tool rather than are primanding metric can revolutionize the manufacturing process and foster a culture of excellence.
Learn more about how Worximity can provide meaningful data to drive improvement by watching a quick software demonstration or by booking a demo.
