OEE is like sailing

The story goes that for sailors, life is about the journey; while for power boaters, life is about the destination. According to OEE expert Paul Zepf of Zarpac Inc., OEE is also about the journey.

Overall equipment effectiveness, or OEE, is a concept that is continuing to gain traction among packagers as a way of improving operations. Plant managers want to know their existing OEE (expressed as a number from 0 to 100%), their competitors' OEE, and best-practice OEE. With these facts in hand, they set a new OEE target (destination) for themselves and task their staff to get them there. Plant managers that I've met are usually power boaters.

The trouble with this approach is that, more often than not, OEE numbers are not comparable from site to site. Given enough time and effort, one can make them comparable, but that should not be the goal. The goal is to improve the manufacturing processes and the skills of the people executing those processes to make operations more effective. The improvements come from making the journey and the learning that occurs along the way.

That's how it is with sailing. Every journey exposes you to differing and changing conditions of wind, waves, current, tide, and temperature. Your boat's rigging and performance change over time and the physical and mental condition of your crew is what it is on any particular day. The captain needs to be constantly assessing all of these conditions and adjusting his plan to make the best of the existing circumstances. There is a destination out there, but the rewards come from making the trip.

If you want to learn more about the OEE journey, Paul is presenting a series of packaging line performance workshops at various locations around the country. Anyone new to sailing or to OEE needs to first learn the basics.

If you want to go sailing, watch for me on my boat Cocoa-Bella on the Chesapeake.

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Comments Keith, OEE is a old thing!! Why do you think there is a sudden hype? Is it because of the system integration developments to calculate OEE? Posted by: Gaurav on March 9, 2008 Keith, What has been your experience using video capture / monitoring technology to assist with discovery of line performance issues? Will there be any discussions at your workshop of the tools currently available? Thank you Ray Ray; I have used high speed video for troubleshooting machinery problems and believe it to be quite effective. I have referred your question on the workshop to Paul Zepf. Keith Posted by: Ray Babbitt on June 10, 2008 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)