13/01/2023
Today we’re talking about OEE, or Overall Equipment Effectiveness for those in the know. OEE is a metric for measuring productivity of any given process, primarily within the manufacturing industry.
Efficiency - that glorious principle of optimising every little detail of a process to perfection. It often means the difference between profit and loss, success and failure. That’s why it’s so important to strive for optimum efficiency, and the best way to achieve that is by measuring, analysing and reacting to your OEE (overall equipment effectiveness).
OEE is calculated based on 3 key performance indicators - availability, quality, and performance. It’s traditionally expressed as a percentage value where 100% means the process or machine is running the entire time (availability) without producing any defective output (quality) while operating at maximum speed (performance). So, the first (and most important) step toward determining your OEE is gathering data… and, as you may have guessed, we like to do that using low-code.
Mendix OEE is a great tool for gathering the data you need quickly and easily. Compared to more traditional off-the-shelf alternatives, Mendix OEE is several times quicker to implement and is also highly flexible, which is very useful indeed for measuring your OEE the way you want to.
For example, we recently worked with Etex to refine their OEE tracking and management flow. We did this by building a Mendix app that captured production data from both machines and operators. Here’s how such an app can track your availability, quality and performance data.
Mendix can be linked to your shop floor (via Azure IoT, Mindsphere or other IoT platforms) allowing it to automatically detect when a machine is running and when it isn’t. This information can then be used to create downtime reports, complete with further details supplied directly by the operator (for example, choosing from a tree-structure menu of possible causes). Result - insights into your availability and most common reasons for downtime events.
Operators can start and stop production orders directly in a Mendix app, and also confirm output quality on the spot. Any defective output can be further detailed by the operator, citing reasons or giving observations relevant to the situation. Over time this builds a statistical overview of the most common causes for defective production output.
By comparing the actual pieces produced while a specific machine was running (a subset of the data gathered for quality) with the maximum potential output of said machine (assuming it is running at 100% speed with 100% success), we can calculate its performance metric.
This information is stored and processed within the app to your specifications, resulting in a highly automated and accurate OEE report. Lastly, this data can be synced with PowerBI to allow for even more advanced self-service reporting!
Like many large manufacturing companies, Etex needed an OEE solution that could be implemented in multiple facilities around the world. They also needed flexibility, as they (again, like many other manufacturing companies) measure their OEE in their own specific way, boiling 3 KPIs down into 1 single number. And they preferred to have it done in a month instead of a year. For all these reasons, Mendix OEE was the way to go - fast, flexible and easy to implement.
If you’re looking for an improved OEE for your business, get in touch!
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