Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) Implementation

A major Over The Counter (OTC) pharmaceutical manufacturer was seeking to extend the useful life of fully capitalized equipment while at the same time increasing the productivity of the equipment. The goal was to increase units of production by 25% with minimal new equipment investments.

The client realized that having full visibility to the operating state of the equipment for both real time reactivity and long term assessment of outage root causes would allow for higher Overall Equipment Effectiveness(OEE) and superior production efficiency. The client began a program of understanding the detailed requirements, solution alternatives and implementation of the optimal solution.

Endeavor was retained to drive and manage the full project from requirements gathering and prioritization thru solution architecture, vendor selection, implementation of the solution, change management including operator training and turn over to the permanent staff. Endeavor acted as both the program manager and the functional lead for the project. In the solution development we guided the technology vendors resources to develop the technical solution. Finally Endeavor was responsible for create a new business process and required procedures as well as roll out the full solution to the shop floor operations staff. During the project the client began a Lean Journey and Endeavor developed specific materials to integrate the OEE program with the Lean implementation.

Within the first year of solution rollout OEE increased by 31%. The plants that have implemented the solution have been able bring on additional capacity from under performing plants and have increase total output by 12% without significant investment in equipment or people. The OEE solution has provided a data rich foundation for numerous continual improvement programs that have selectively replaced equipment bottlenecks and frequent failure points. The continual focus on both OEE and Lean have supported a fundamental shift in culture from a reactive environment to one of continuous improvement based on facts and data analysis.