OEE and Beyond: The Case for a Multi-Metric Approach

Modern manufacturing environments produce an enormous amount of data. And as systems and platforms develop to monitor and manage this volume of information, many companies are left wondering what kind of software best suits their need for both measurement and analytics. One popular metric used in measuring manufacturing performance is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). In OEE, production performance is measured by calculating the factory’s performance, availability and quality. But as companies seek the best software solution for their data flow, they should consider if this metric is best suited for their needs and what other metrics are available.

OEE is a good metric for showing what happened at the shop floor level specific to machine performance and quality. It is very manufacturing specific but allows you to determine which machines or processes are performing in a less than optimal manner. It also reflects quality loss, again allowing you to focus on which equipment or system requires action for improvement. With software that allows exact measurements of these variables, preventive and predictive maintenance can be honed to reduce quality fallout and unplanned downtime. And, for issues identified as cycle time failures for operator and technician functions that exceed the established time in the availability calculation, training and process improvement initiatives can be undertaken to reduce downtime that impacts availability.