OEE Integration – Part III

The primary components of your OEE infrastructure are People and DATA.  The people are the life of the OEE system, all else is support.  Data collection and management technologies play an important role in the OEE process, however, they are data collection / process / delivery systems that are programmed to provide reports as requested by the people that use the system.

So, now that we have determined that people are the drivers of the system, the core task then is to provide the people with the education and training they need to be an integral part of the OEE process.  Remember, the people ultimately analyze and make sense of the data using a variety of technology solutions.  Your team is also responsible for recommending actions to improve the current processes based on the data.

Training

Trained and qualified personnel are at the core of any initiative and are fundamental to the success of the program in general.  Our recommendation is to ensure that all personnel across the organization, from the shop floor to the executive leadership, understand the principles of OEE and how it will become an integral part of the company culture to sustain and drive continual improvement.

The executive leadership must embrace the concept of OEE and determine the policies and procedures that surround its measurement and support the actions required to execute improvements to the system and processes accordingly.  To this end, we also recommend that the training is performed by personnel within the organization and not necessarily by executive or senior management.

Consultants serve as an excellent resource to facilitate the initial training and to provide the necessary tools or materials to assure its success.  More importantly however, consultants serve as catalyst to facilitate the integration and implementation process.  A consultant would best serve your interests by supporting a “train the trainer” methodology.

Executive and senior management are responsible for defining the policies and procedures of the OEE management process or system.  While OEE goals and objectives may be determined by management in conjunction with the team, or some of its members, the team is ultimately responsible for the development and execution of the action or improvement plans.

For this reason, we recommend that employees are trained by their immediate supervisor, team leader, or each other (peer to peer).  The objective of peer to peer training is to engage all employees in the training process by encouraging each employee to teach a portion or segment of the training module.  Of course this latter approach assumes that you have training materials available to support this activity.

Training with your own staff will affirm the commitment of the company and the employees will appreciate the presence and development of in-house expertise to make the OEE initiative a success.  This approach also assures that ownership remains with the users of the system – the company.  The best way to teach someone is to give them the responsibility to teach others.  Those who assume the responsibility to teach will certainly become better students as well.

This approach may strike you as a protectionist measure to preserve our integrity as consultants.  To the contrary, our objective as consultants is to serve as a catalyst to develop the infrastructure of your organization using a strategy where the system is ultimately self-sustaining and integral to the culture of your operation.

Over the past few posts we have developed a strategy for engaging your teams in the OEE process.  As we have indicated throughout our series, there are a variety of technology solutions available to measure OEE, few however, provide the tools to develop the infrastructure in your organization to make them effective.

We will pursue this strategy further in future posts.

Until Next Time – STAY lean!