What are some of the Myths and Realities of OEE?

Myth No 1 -An Overall Equipment Effectiveness level of 85% is ‘World Class’
It certainly is not if you are running, say, a flour mill or an off-shore oil platform !! In this case if you’re not hitting 90% + OEE then you’ll soon be out of business. We didn’t let the Japanese finish off the sentence of what they told us 20+ years ago –and that is that ‘’85% is World Class……..(we then rushed out of the room, before they added)…. for a typical Machining Centre that has a significant number of Changeovers’’

Myth No 2-OEE is a Management tool to use as a benchmark and comparator-
This misses the point of the OEE being a Manufacturing Floor problem solving tool.
If however, ‘Corporate’ insists on benchmarking, then beware of not comparing like with like-Not just ‘apples with apples’ But ‘Bramleys with Bramleys’!!!
Also 5 x questions to answer

1. What is the impact of the number and variety of product changeovers?
2.  Who sets the standards for performance rates when running? (Production Planning; Equipment Supplier or Engineering?)
3.  How big an impact does manning levels and skill levels have on cycle time?
4.  Are all minor stoppages recorded?
5.  Are we measuring all aspects of quality including packaging materials?

Myth No3 –OEE should be calculated automatically by computer
The computation approach is far less important than the interpretation. Whilst initially calculating manually or inputting manually you can be asking ‘why? x 5 times’ .Once you’ve proven the manual measurement process-then mechanise it.

Myth No 4-OEE on non-bottleneck equipment is unimportant
OEE provides a route to guide problem solving. The main requirement is for an objective measure of hidden losses even on equipment elsewhere in the chain especially if it is generating controllable waste or non-value adding.

Myth No 5-We don’t need any more output, so why raise the OEE?
Management’s job is to maximise the value generated from the Company’s assets. This includes business development .Accepting a low OEE defies commercial common–sense. If you are able to increase the OEE from say 60% to 80% by tackling the relevant 6x Losses, you will have increased the productive capacity of that asset by 33%-which means you can produce the same output in 2/3rds of the current time-or make 33% more in the same time. Either way it gives you a choice of flexibility at 80% OEE that you do not enjoy at 60%

Myth No 6-OEE is not useful because it doesn’t consider planned utilisation losses and, for example labour co-ordination/diversion losses and material supply starvation losses
The OEE is one measure, but not the only one used. Others will include productivity, cost , quality ,delivery, safety , morale and environment. Often these ‘Door to Door’ or ‘Management ‘losses (as opposed to equipment based Manufacturing team ‘Floor to Floor’ losses) are vitally important. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to OEE .The trick is to adapt OEE to your business (as opposed to blindly adopting it in the classic sense) What you must not do however is corrupt it ,so it becomes unrecognisable and doesn’t point you at the problems & hence opportunities