How are your assets doing?

The company I work for recently decided to make one of our machining cells “world class,” which is defined as an overall equipment effectiveness of 85 percent or more. From observation, our OEE is probably 45 to 50 percent, but we don’t know for certain.

Fortunately, software is available to help determine machine capacity. It is called machine data collection, machine event monitoring, machine performance monitoring or asset monitoring, depending on the developer. These software packages tell—in real time—whether a machine is running, waiting or cutting. Other information includes whether a machine has its spindle, emergency stop or feed hold on, or if there is an alarm.

You can analyze production by year, month, week, day and shift, identifying good and bad trends. Problems can be detected and corrected before they get out of hand.

Many of these packages have a so-called production dashboard. One software package, Multi-MDC (Machine Data Collection/Monitoring) from Spectrum CNC Technologies, Corona, Calif., lists groups or cells of machines in a spreadsheet. The list of information includes machine description, operator, part being run, time started, part count, cycle uptime, spindle uptime, time waiting, alarms, amount of idle time, current run time and total time. The spreadsheet rows are color-coded by status: green for running, yellow for waiting, red for alarm, blue for idling and dark red for power off. Quite a bit of information at your fingertips!