The Whirlpool Corporation’s Findlay Division manufactures dishwashers for many brands in the world1. The demand for product is at an all-time high. The goal was then how to get more out of the facility and its equipment without making huge capital investments? And more specifically how can the maintenance department support the needs of manufacturing to achieve the company goals?
To make these improvements, the Division used OEE as a measure of their current equipment efficiency. As the company started tracking individual pieces of equipment’s OEE ratings, it became apparent that there was room for improvement. The combination of fundamental maintenance practices such as Root Cause Failure analysis and a preventive and predictive maintenance system, along with very strong support from Division leadership, enabled the Findlay Division to get off the ground with the Total Productive Maintenance program. Again "it was the people that made this change possible" (Jim Dray, TPM Facilitator). The Division has been able to increase production by 21%, without any significant capital costs.
The OEE measure is an excellent KPI for use on both strategic and operational levels, if it is used correctly. When an organization holds people with knowledge and experience of the typical shortages of OEE and its common implementation challenges, the probability of achieving the intended benefits of OEE will certainly increase. Based on using OEE as an improvement driver at the case study company, some success factors have been identified:
- A standard definition of OEE must be clearly defined and communicated at all levels within the organization since this is the foundation for its utilization. It is especially important to determine how the ideal cycle time and planned and unplanned downtime should be interpreted.
- Involving the operators in the process of defining production loss causes and configuring the templates and lists to be used for monitoring promotes operator commitment, understanding of the procedure and awareness of the frequency of sporadic and chronic disturbances.
- Driving the OEE implementation as a project with a predefined organization, a structured working procedure promoting cross-functional and shop floor involvement, and practical guidance on what activities to execute and in what order, implies resource allocation that forces management attention and puts OEE on the agenda.
- Viewing and communicating OEE as a driver for improvements rather than a management measure for follow-up and control of performance (although this is also the case) is one of the cornerstones for a successful OEE implementation.
- Active involvement of the support functions, especially production engineering and maintenance, is required, otherwise the level of improvements to increase OEE will not be enough and the speed of change will consequently be too low.
- Separating improvement actions into those directly having an impact on process stability, i.e. OEE, from those with indirect impact is necessary especially in the initial implementation phase to show quick results.
- Including reporting OEE and prioritized daily actions in the routines of daily follow-up meetings (from team level to department/site level) is an excellent way to integrate OEE as a driver for improvements in the operations management system.
- Results should be communicated, e.g. by graphical visualization of the OEE improvements on the boards. Visualizing OEE and process output together are illustrative and motivating.
- Including production performance in the company ́s overall production strategy and managing this with a continuous follow up of OEE as a KPI on different consolidation levels is the optimal driver for efficient management. When top management attention is continuously given to the process of achieving stable production processes the possibilities of reaching good results certainly increases.
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