With easy access to reliably recorded data, it’s a lot quicker to establish just how well certain products run on each machine at any site.
However in my role as Gemba’s Managing Director, I often work with new clients who have found it difficult to make informed decisions without having real-time data to hand.
Validated data not only empowers a workforce to make improvements, but by having access to data as a manager, a leader, or an operative, it removes the emotion attached to difficult discussions with other team members about productivity.
As data and results are fact, decisions can be made more quickly without long debates and further delays that could impact your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
In this blog, I’ve taken a closer look at three key advantages in how using real-time data to your advantage can improve manufacturing OEE.
1. It improves your workforce reliability
OEE is a result of various metrics that can be influenced by the workforce to varying degrees. When the workforce experience the effect of their actions on their real-time OEE measures, behaviours can be focused on improving these.
Having real-time metrics enables inefficiencies to be identified and rectified quickly, minimising their affect and creating more reliable operations.
A great example of this is our client Westland, who achieved an increase of over 20% in their overall line efficiencies since implementing Gemba’s manufacturing OEE software and related services.
Our software improved the team’s visibility and gave the ability to immediately incorporate data into their CI activities, helping Westland save more £0.5 million per annum.
2. It improves your productivity
To improve productivity first you need a reliable measure of reality, not a gut feeling or an idea of why something is unproductive.
Having hard facts, data to back this up with and an intimate knowledge of the operations will ensure informed decisions are made, and improved productivity will stand the best chance of being successful.
When first approaching Gemba, our client Barfoots of Botley were struggling to get to grips with asset performance and discover the root cause of problems. By implementing our online OEE service, Barfoots were able to easily access data and make informed decisions which resulted in an immediate 10% uplift in availability on their service line.
Having the automatic data captured, removed the ambiguity of the manually captured and interpreted data, they just needed the facts.
Having confidence in such validated data, that can be shared with the wider teams in an organisation, ensures everyone is using the same hymn sheet for decision making. Recording when actions are taken means their effectiveness can be quickly assessed for all to see, to learn from and to adopt if appropriate.
3. It improves your yield
To control quality and improve yield requires close analysis on product performance by asking questions such as “How well does my equipment perform when it produces a certain product?” or “What is the yield when I produce at different speeds?”.
Product designs, materials and machine speeds may all impact productivity without being obvious initially. The quality metric within OEE should be able to distinguish the right-first-time rate of each product so you know the answers to these key questions. Ideally you should have this essential metric in real-time so your yield variation doesn’t short your customer order.
There are a number of ways to be alerted to out-of-specification conditions. With Gemba’s connect system, the quality metric is able to be controlled in real-time with simple visual alerts or automatic emails, texts, or a Klaxon if necessary, to get the attention of production controllers.
In my experience, reacting rather than reworking is always more cost effective.
Take control of your OEE
To control and improve your workforce’s reliability, productivity and yield, discover more about our OEE manufacturing software solutions or get in touch with us today to explore your options.