How do you use OEE, MTTR and MTBF to drive continuous improvement? These measurements help your management team find Continuous Improvement (CI) opportunities -that match YOUR Goals, Objectives and Directives - in: Process, Reliability, Maintainability, Throughput, Quality and, most importantly the overall health of your production floor.

Tip: To be able to quickly understand a ballpark Return-On-Investment compare the actual OEE, MTBF and MTTR to the actual design specifications of the Line, Cell, Equipment, System or Component.

North American companies tend to think in Silo's when they look for CI opportunities. Some Silo's commonly looked at are Maintenance, Production, MRO Inventory, Accounting, Procurement, Quality, Human Resources, etc.. When you look at it from a higher vantage point all of these are pieces of the puzzle that produces will produce the Return-On-Investment for your shareholders by producing First-time-Through quality widget at the most cost effective price point. All of these fall under one name Operations. Therefore when you are looking for CI opportunities you need to first look at the plant/organization Holistically; not as distinctive silo's. 

Tip: If you already have a Cell / Line or piece of equipment highlighted as a bottleneck then you would perform the following only on that Cell / Line / Equipment.

Once you have used the measurements to find your various areas of opportunities you need to put each area of opportunity for each system/equipment/component through a Root Cause Analysis.  What is causing the problem?  There are many different ways to perform a Root Cause analysis.  You can use what ever approach your organization is currently using for Root Cause Analysis.  The key is to actually get deep enough to the root cause!  Some areas to look for - but limited to - when you are trying to find the Root Cause are:

•        Lack of employee Knowledge, Skills and Task's (KST's),
•        Business Processes -lack of or not being followed,
•        Respectful Communication,
•        Equipment Reliability Problem - proactive maintenance program, over maintaining, Lubrication management, alignment program, etc.
•        Quality
•        Availability
•        Uptime
•        Accountability
•        Focus
•        Contractor Management
•        Material Management
•        Scheduling Process
•        Software - control & management
•        Morale
•        Trust Issues
•        Personality Conflicts
•        Bullying
•        Technology
•        Access Issues

TIP: I recommend that you take the time to categorize each of the individual Root Causes into one of following CI opportunity categories.

•        Reliability
•        Productivity
•        Maintainability
•        KST's
•        Quality
•        Business Processes
•        Systemic Issues

Note: The information contained in this blogg is the opinion of the author and is intended for discussion purposes only.