Lean – A Race Against Time

Background If “Time is Money”, is it reasonable for us to consider that “Wasting Time is Wasting Money?” Whether we are discussing customer service, health care, government services, or manufacturing – waste is often identified as one of the top concerns that must be addressed and ultimately eliminated.  As is often the case in most organizations, the next step is an attempt to […]

Killer Metrics

Managing performance on any scale requires some form of measurement.  These measurements are often summarized into a single result that is commonly referred to as a metric.  Many businesses use tools such as dashboards or scorecards to present a summary or combination of multiple metrics into a single report. While these reports and charts can be impressive and are capable […]

Benchmarking OEE

Benchmarking Systems: We have learned that an industry standard or definition for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) has been adopted by the Semi Conductor Industry and also confirms our approach to calculating and using OEE and other related metrics. The SEMI standards of interest are as follows: SEMI E10:  Definition and Measurement of Equipment Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability. SEMI E35:  Guide to Calculate Cost of Ownership […]

How OEE can improve your Inventory

Once you have established a robust OEE system, you should also be reaping benefits in other areas of your organization. We will be offering some insights into the other performance metrics such as inventory over the next few weeks. Improved availability, performance, and quality will all have an impact on your inventory and materials management processes. Inventory turns is one […]

How to Calculate the Quality Factor for OEE

How to correctly calculate the Quality Factor for OEE Most people assume that the quality factor for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is determined by simply calculating the yield of good parts from the total parts produced.  Unfortunately, this logic does not hold true when calculating the quality factor beyond the individual part or process. We will show you how to […]

OEE and the Quality Factor

Many articles written on OEE (ours being the exception), indicate or suggest that the quality factor for OEE is calculated as a simple percentage of good parts from the total of all parts produced.  While this calculation may work for a single line part number, it certainly doesn’t hold true when attempting to calculate OEE for multiple parts or machines. OEE […]

OEE and Capacity Management

Capacity – Available or Required? From a scheduling perspective it is very easy to determine how much capacity (or time) will be required to manufacture a minimum quantity of parts.  However, it is not just a matter of multiplying the Standard Cycle Time by the Quantity of Parts and dividing by the part or process OEE %. As you may recall, the availability component of […]

LEAN Environment: Waste Management and OEE

In recent years much emphasis has been placed on the state of our environment and LEAN can help our cause.  If we consider just how much energy and resources are consumed due to inefficiency and waste.  OEE is a measure of how effectively time is used as a resource; however, it does not necessarily reflect the waste that is created in […]