2.1 Introduction

2.1 Introduction

Companies are under increasing pressure to meet consumers’ expectations for high quality products while operating more efficiently with less downtime. One of the major goals in manufacturing processes is to maximise overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), to reduce and/or eliminate what are known as the ‘Six Big Losses’ ² – the most common causes of equipment-based productivity loss in manufacturing.

This OEE assessment involves not only equipment maintenance but all aspects of machine operation, installation and production. This approach can also be applied to operators and production staff. OEE measurement is based on the top three categories of six big losses: availability rate/loss, performance rate/loss and quality rate/loss. Although it is difficult to achieve zero loss, it is believed that striving for zero defects is an important prerequisite for the success of the total productive maintenance (TPM). Table 2 defines the ideal OEE values.