If you had to make a list of all the elements that contribute to a manufacturing organization’s OEE tracking success, accountability would be right at the top.
It’s easy to say to employees that you’re having issues in terms of quality, availability, or overall performance. It’s another thing entirely to explain what that means in a way that gets people to buy into it. In a way that helps them understand why any proposed changes are absolutely the right move to make at exactly the right time.
Even the best OEE software in the world won’t necessarily do this on its own… but a digital champion for all of your Overall Equipment Effectiveness efforts can.
A Champion Rises
On the one hand, there is quite a bit that the right piece of OEE and machine downtime tracking software like Thrive can do for your business on its own.
For starters, it can ingest the historical data that your business is creating in a way that makes it easy to see not only what you’re doing that works, but what doesn’t. This allows opportunities for improvement in terms of productivity to rise to the top, putting you in an excellent position to take advantage of them.
It also helps you understand how you’re doing by comparing one production line to another, one department to another, or even multiple locations in terms of tangible performance. If there are any outliers, you can quickly see why – all so that you can drill down and do something about it.
But what OEE software might not natively do is justify its own existence – at least in terms of the average everyday employee. They see big changes that are being made in the name of productivity but might not believe in the system behind it all.
That’s where a digital OEE champion comes into play.
This is someone who believes in the power of Overall Equipment Effectiveness and who wants to spread those ideals far and wide. Someone who can help people better understand not just the changes that are being made, but why they’re so important.
A person who can help answer questions and address any concerns that people might have. But most importantly, this is someone who can provide an essential context to the actions that are playing out on a daily basis.
The more people believe in OEE as a concept, the more ownership they’ll take over their work and its overall impact on the organization as a whole. As that happens, the level of engagement they have with their job can’t help but increase. This in turn leads to those OEE gains that you were hoping to see in the first place, creating a mutually beneficial situation for everyone involved.
If you’d like to find out more information about why you need to select a veritable champion to head up your organization’s OEE efforts, or if you’d like to get started on your own journey of continuous improvement but aren’t sure where to begin, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.
