Measuring the effect that a change to the production process has on the overall efficiency of the manufacturing process becomes a crucial component of making improvements or other alterations to the production line. This measurement is one of the uses of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), a method of obtaining a complete view of the efficiency of a production process.
Undertaking the task of improving OEE can require an investment of both time and money, but the benefits make it worthwhile. When putting together a program, it can help to work with an equipment provider who is committed to system features that contribute positively to OEE. Systems which are programmed with support for PackML or other centralized control schemes can help make collection of data relevant to OEE calculations easy, and automating data collection also ensures more accurate measurements – human operators may forget or miscount, but a system will not.