Manufacturing and operations · Level 3 to 5. Operators, team leaders, process engineers and operations managers
Manufacturing performance: OEE, takt time and the six big losses
What a line is really producing, why the board is usually flattering, and where the hours went.
- 2modules
- 4.5CPD hours
- 240guided minutes
- Freemodule 1
About this course
Overall equipment effectiveness is the most quoted and least trusted number in manufacturing. Most plants can tell you their OEE. Rather fewer can tell you what went into loading time, whether reworked units were counted as good, or which of the three factors moved when the figure improved.
This course teaches the measure as an argument rather than a formula. It covers availability, performance and quality and how each is quietly inflated; the six big losses and which factor each one lands in; mean time between failures and mean time to repair, and why they point at different fixes; takt time and the constraint; and how to read a downtime Pareto so improvement effort goes where it pays.
It is written for the people who have to defend the number in a Monday review, not for a certification exam.
What you will be able to do
- Calculate overall equipment effectiveness and state what each factor measures
- Judge what belongs in loading time and recognise how the figure is inflated
- Map the six big losses onto availability, performance and quality
- Distinguish mean time between failures from mean time to repair and act on each
- Calculate takt time and compare it honestly with cycle time
- Identify the constraint on a line and explain why it governs plant output
- Read a downtime Pareto and direct improvement effort at what it shows
Modules
Assessment and certificate
Knowledge check after each module and a final assessment at 80 per cent, with unlimited attempts.
A free digital certificate showing 4.5 CPD hours with a verification code that any employer can check. It evidences knowledge of the measures and their failure modes. Operating a specific machine, and any competence signed off against it, remains a workplace assessment.
Questions
Is 100 per cent OEE the goal?
No, and chasing it usually damages something else. Around 85 per cent is widely treated as world class for a discrete manufacturing line, and a figure above that is far more often a definition problem than an achievement. If OEE jumps without a corresponding change on the floor, the first thing to examine is what was moved out of loading time.
Should planned maintenance count as downtime?
It depends on the question you are answering, and you must say which convention you are using. Excluding it measures how well the equipment ran while you intended to run it. Including it measures how much of the calendar produced saleable output. Both are legitimate. Silently switching between them so the figure improves is not.
Does reworked output count as good?
Not in the quality factor. Quality is first pass yield: what came out right the first time. A unit that was reworked consumed capacity twice and is exactly the loss the measure exists to expose. Counting it as good hides the hidden factory that rework represents.
Our OEE looks fine but we still miss customer orders. Why?
Because OEE measures a line and a customer buys a plant. A line can run beautifully and still produce the wrong thing, produce ahead of demand into stock, or sit downstream of a constraint that governs everything. Takt time and the constraint, both covered in module two, are the measures that connect line performance to whether the order ships.