What does OEE mean?

OEE is the abbreviation for “Overall Equipment Effectiveness”, a method developed in Japan for the determination of key figures for monitoring and improving the efficiency of production plants.

The use of the OEE method for process quality assessment has become common practice in many industry sectors, e.g. the automotive and paper industry. OEE key figures help companies to systematically identify potentials for optimisation.

In the meantime, the OEE models are also widely used in the food, chemicals and pharmaceutical industry. However, recent figures published by the Association of German Machine and Plant Manufacturers (VDMA) show that the pharmaceutical industry, for example, produces with an average OEE of just 24 percent. The reasons for this low OEE are, among other things, insufficient availability and performance of the machines due to extensive set-up and cleaning periods, unscheduled production downtime, inefficient processes and poor planning.

These obstacles can be removed by improving the transparency of machine utilisation times, collecting and analysing potential sources of loss and always providing information on production processes in real time.