One approach is to accept the fastest cycle time as the top technical speed INDEPENDENT of the material being processed. Losses are then bucketed and “known” losses are accounted for the material impact.

I’ve seen that approach and it’s clean because it does impact capacity also since OEE does impact proven capacity questions.

Others will say calculate performance losses based on different technical speeds but then no one will EVER (most likely) ask how to improve speeds of slower running materials.

Chris is right, especially for a manual system. Keep in mind the purpose of OEE is to drive improvement. To Chris’ point, if the resolution and ease of use is an issue, there will be limited improvement.

An automatic system that archives historical performance can overcome this. We use a real-time system that is based in MS Excel/Office that has this capability. You could then rank and attack your “bottom 10” bad actors for a given time period.

Yet another option is to not get bogged down in the details and instead work using a duration that is long enough to wipe out the effects of mix. That may be an hour, shift or day … whatever makes sense.

Robert,

“Do you know how your system archives this data? Is it some type of proprietary interface that’s part of the machinery? An after market sensor setup?”

The system (known as Real-Time Production Efficiency Monitoring) archives the data by default at midnight on the last day of the month. The norm is to accumulate it in shared network storage where it can be analyzed by anyone.

No, the interface is not proprietary. It’s MS Office-based and readily links to PLC’s, data loggers, and Arduino-type devices.

The sensors can be after market or OEM.

Let me say I do have a financial interest in this. My company is the one that developed the system back in 2009. Having said that, we have yet to find a more economical way of monitoring a manufacturing process in real-time. It’s incredibly flexible and MS Office can usually be supported in-house. Our book available at Amazon or eBay provides details.

Given my involvement and the fact I don’t want to hijack this thread, I’m reluctant to post additional details here. If there’s interest, I will post screen shots and answer additional questions in a separate thread.