How to Calculate and Improve Machine Operator Efficiency
In the manufacturing industry, the capabilities and expertise of an operator are being presented in terms of “Efficiency. An operator with higher efficiency generates more efficient products than an operator with lower efficiency in the same time frame. And when operators work with maximum efficiency, the manufacturing cost of the factory goes down. Machine operator efficiency enables managers to better interpret and increase the performance of their shop floor employees by recognizing inefficiencies, improving training and data collection strategies & enhancing visibility.
Measuring and Increasing operator efficiency of machines and equipment on the factory floor can have a considerable impact on manufacturing productivity and output.
Secondly, factory capacity is measured as per the operator efficiency or line efficiency. Therefore, efficiency is one of the most essential performances measuring tools. So how do you measure operator efficiency in the factory?
How Do You Calculate Machine Operator Efficiency?
Overall Labor Effectiveness, is a helpful manufacturing KPI for deciding the effectiveness of machine operators.
Estimating operator efficiency takes into consideration the time operators put in working, the number of parts they build and the quality of parts generated. It is similar to OEE but calculates the efficiency of the operator instead of the efficiency of the equipment.
Similar to OEE, there are three parts included in this formula:
- Availability: / Time Scheduled for Work
- Performance: Total number of parts generated / Expected number of parts produced (based on avg cycle times)
- Quality: Number of Quality parts produced / Total parts produced
Each of these variables will be calculated in a percentage, which is further multiplied together to determine a total percentage that represents Overall Labor Effectiveness.
OEE Calculation
For a more extensive productivity calculation, OEE should be utilized. OEE is best measured per machine rather than across the entire factory as it is then simpler to recognize where improvements require to be made to help increase productivity. OEE is measured as:
Performance x Availability x Quality
Performance is the speed at which the machine operates, described as a percentage of the speed it is planned to run.
Availability is the asset operating time described as a percentage of available operating time.
Quality is the total number of good parts produced, described as a percentage of the total number of parts that were initiated.
There are several ways of improving performance, availability & quality, a few of them are as below.
- Performance of machinery can be increased by production monitoring systems that allow you to recognize, track and rectify faults or bottlenecks in the process.
- Availability can also be increased by automating machinery and the production process. Automation assists to improve available working hours as machinery is not rely upon an operator for it to keep generating.
- Quality can be increased by utilizing vision inspection through your production process. This process allows you to recognize and remove faulty products earlier in the process.
How to Improve Operator Efficiency?
Let’s see, how can you increase operator efficiency in the pursuit of driving improved productivity? Below we discuss a variation of solutions that enable your operators to make better, quicker decisions and provide high-quality parts on time.
Build Precise Work Standard
By having exact work standards, involving jobs, cycle times, manufacturers can have a better understanding of the predicted production performance they should hold operators responsible to.
With production monitoring solution, data from machines, operators and systems can be gathered and tracked in real-time, along with job standards can be updated to consider any changes.
Easy Shop Floor Visibility
The key function of real-time data collection is that the data can be compared across the industry, from corporate level upto the machinists and operators on the shop floor.
To increase the performance of operators, we must provide them the tools to make better, quicker decisions on a regular basis. This improves visibility of dashboards across the shop floor which can notify operators of where they are now against production goals. These tools can be also be utilized to recognize concerns (machine downtime events) so that it can be resolved quickly. Shop floor dashboards give an overview of whole shop floor, which shows the status of each equipment and where it is now against production goals.
The operator dashboard is a tablet that operators can communicate with to handle their responsibilities more efficiently. They can have a clear view of their performance versus production goals and can add reasons for downtime & quality issues.
Improved Motivation
Developing various programs depends on operator performance is a simple way to execute a friendly competitive system to motivate operators. In this way, all operators have the equal chance to “win” and as operators are performing above the standard, the industry is winning as a whole. Goal setting as well as competition between work groups or cells can tremendously improve motivation and output.
Improve Training
With systems in place to interpret operator and equipment performance, managers will have a good understanding of where more opportunities exist. They can determine bottlenecks, areas of inefficiency & can recognize what shifts, jobs, machines and operators are high performing and which are not.
This data can be utilized to build stronger training material and utilize the successful aspects of the factory floor to assure that the less successful components have the tools required to drive productivity forwards.
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