Use of packing equipment efficiency as an estimate of the overall plant effectiveness and as a tool to improve financial results of a food-processing unit

Abstract

Use of packing equipment efficiency as an estimate of the overall plant effectiveness and as a tool to improve financial results of a food-processing unit Uso da eficiência do equipamento de envase como estimativa da eficiência global de tiragem e como ferramenta para melhorar os resultados financeiros de uma unidade de processamento de alimentos AbstractAlthough Overall Equipment Effectiveness -OEE has been proven a useful tool to measure the efficiency of a single piece of equipment in a food processing plant it is possible to expand its concept to assess the performance of a whole production line assembled in series. This applies to the special case that all pieces of equipment are programmed to run at similar throughput of the system's constraint. Such procedure has the advantage to allow for simpler data collection to support operations improvement strategy. This article presents an approach towards continuous improvement adapted for food processing industries that have limited budget and human resources to install and run complex automated data collection and computing systems. It proposes the use of data collected from the packing line to mimic the whole unit's efficiency and suggests a heuristic method based on the geometric properties of OEE to define what parameters shall be targeted to plot an improvement plan. In addition, it is shown how OEE correlates with earnings, allowing for the calculation of the impact of continuous process improvement to business results. The analysis of data collected in a commercial food processing unit made possible: (i) the identification of the major causes of efficiency loss by assessing the performance of packing equipment; (ii) the definition of an improvement strategy to elevate OEE from 53.9% to 74.1% and; (iii) the estimate that by implementing such strategy an increase of 88% on net income is attained. Keywords: Overall Equipment Effectiveness -OEE; Total Productive Maintenance -TPM; Continuous improvement; Food packing line efficiency. ResumoApesar de a Eficiência Global dos Equipamentos -OEE ser uma ferramenta comprovadamente útil para medir a eficiência de um único equipamento em uma planta de processamento de alimentos, é possível expandir os seus conceitos para avaliar o desempenho de uma linha de produção em série. Isso se aplica para o caso especial em que todos os equipamentos são programados para operar com a mesma tiragem da restrição do sistema. Tal procedimento possibilita uma coleta simplificada de dados para suportar uma estratégia de melhoria das operações. Este artigo apresenta uma abordagem de melhoria contínua, adaptada para as indústrias de processamento de alimentos que contam com orçamento e recursos humanos limitados para implementar sistemas complexos de coleta automatizada e computação de dados. São propostos o uso de dados coletados na linha de envase para simular a eficiência de toda a unidade e um método heurístico, baseado nas propriedades geométricas da OEE, para identificar quais parâmetros devem ser considerados ao definir um plano ...

Analysis of the Production Capacity of a Packaging Machine in the Plastic Components Sector in a Company of the Manaus Industrial Complex

“…As stated by [3], the overall efficiency of an equipment is established by the TPM as an indicator that continuously assesses the machine's production capacity to deliver what was theoretically calculated in the manufacturing design. The authors explain that the OEE can identify values and measure losses during the manufacturing process, which is divided into three (3) factors: availability, productivity and quality.…”

“…With this, it seeks to achieve, in the short term, and gradually, improvements which should eventually become continuous and long-lasting. This reachability through indicators, which are fragmented for better understanding, also allows for an in-depth study in order to increase results [3].…”