Increasing Productivity and Profit with OEE

The first two of the Six Big Losses are about keeping your operations running as much as possible, maintenance of equipment, and scheduling of orders along with setups are key for this category.

Machine/Equipment breakdowns can be a significant source of unplanned downtime, to assist with improving your breakdowns the following are topics that need to be considered as part of your improvement process.

• Maintenance Plans –Ensure your machines/equipment are maintained to a level whereby unplanned breakdowns are reduced; this needs to be balanced with the non-productive downtime of machines during maintenance.
• Condition monitoring – Some machines may come with the ability to understand their condition, and others will require sensors to be attached to the equipment, Sensors can alert when a condition is met for example running HOT, or vibrations which might be an indication that lubrication needs addressing.
• Inspections – Having routine inspections of the machines, can often prevent breakdowns, and preventative measures can be put in place before an actual breakdown occurs.

An ERP such as SAP comes with the ability to help you manage the above topics. Understanding the patterns and reasons for these losses is key to helping to resolve them, having an MES (Manufacturing Execution System) such as SAP Digital Manufacturing enables the recording and analysis of downtime and is key to creating preventative actions that can be taken in the future to mitigate the risk of future events.

For most production lines there will always be some setup, adjustments and/or cleaning required, the good news is that this means there will be areas for improvement.   Ensuring this is done correctly first time and efficiently is the key to success.

• Larger batches – the larger the batches the less setup and adjustment time that will be required, a key to this is in the planning and scheduling of your production.
• Optimising orders sequence – by correctly sequencing orders there may be the opportunity to reduce the setup/adjustments as some products may require a similar setup to others.
• Work Instructions - Optimised and easy-to-read work instructions will help ensure that the operators can execute the setup, adjustments and/or cleaning required correctly the first time and at an optimal efficiency.

An ERP and MES with solid planning and scheduling capability is key to being able to achieve the first two items, and an MES with the ability to store and display the correct work instructions for each order is essential for the 3rd item.

SAP ERP combined with SAP Digital Manufacturing provides a seamless planning and scheduling capability including the ability to schedule People, Resources and Tools for order execution.  SAP Digital Manufacturing can store and display work instructions, including 3D models to help ensure the operators are best placed to execute the setup, adjustments and/or cleaning required for each order.

The next two Six Big losses are all about speed, ensuring you have realistic run rates for your machines and can keep the machines running consistently.

Minor Stops can be hard to monitor and to some seem unimportant, however, a lot of machines have a ‘ramp-up time’ and therefore any minor stop has a bigger impact than expected. Idling can happen for example due to a lack of material to process as a downstream resource is having processing issues or there are internal transport issues within the plant.

Understanding the patterns and reasons for these losses is key to helping to resolve them, often it could be due to worn-out parts on a machine, or perhaps an issue with the packaging material that has been recently changed or the quality of the product being processed. An MES such as SAP Digital Manufacturing is capable of recording and reporting on these Minor Stops and Idling.

The impact of machines running at a reduced speed can be huge over a production run, and therefore it’s important to mitigate against these, the reasons for these can be much the same as with Big Loss #3 again understanding the reasons is key so preventative actions can be taken in the future.

• Incorrect setup – incorrect setups can be the cause of machines running at a reduced rate, ensuring that operators have good work instructions and are well trained is essential to helping mitigate this.
• Equipment– This can include worn-out equipment, lubrication issues, and dirt. Ensuring good maintenance plans/inspections, the operators need to respect and understand the equipment to get the best out of the equipment for the short- and long-term operation.
• Material – Either packaging or raw materials can impact the speed of processing, if there has been a change in the packaging the machines may need to be re-calibrated and off-spec raw materials can also impact processing speeds.  A good change and quality control process along with systems can assist with this.
• Work Instructions – If the operators don’t have good instructions and training, this can lead to either machine operating issues and in discrete manufacturing an assembly process may take longer and increase the cycle times in a discrete operation.

These final two Six Big losses are all about the Quality of the product/material you are producing. Quality is a make-or-break item and can lead to costly recalls if there are issues and they are not caught in time.

Once stable production is achieved, any rejects from that point forward would be counted here. The key here is to reduce production defects and ensuring they are spotted as soon as possible, as running for hours only to find at the end that the whole batch is defective is an operator worst nightmare.

• Use of AI - for defect detection can provide real-time alerts.  SAP Digital Manufacturing comes with an AI Visual Inspection capability which can be trained to understand and detect defects.
• Regular Quality testing - can help save a batch and alert the operator of quality issues.
• Equipment Condition - can also play a part in rejects, so helping ensure your machines are inspected and maintained can assist with reducing these rejects.

Startup Rejects are defective production produced from startup until stable production is achieved. They can occur after any equipment startup, however, are most commonly after a change in the setup.

If you are having problems with startup rejects then consider the following:

• Larger batches – the larger the batches the less setup and adjustments time that will be required, a key to this is in the planning and scheduling of your production.
• Optimising orders sequence – by correctly sequencing orders there may be the opportunity to reduce the setup/adjustments as some products may require a similar setup to others.
• Work Instructions - Optimised and easy-to-read work instructions will help ensure that the operators can execute the setup, adjustments and/or cleaning required correctly the first time and at optimal efficiency.
• Equipment condition - can also play a part in startup rejects, so helping ensure your machines are inspected and maintained can assist with reducing these rejects.