Product Inspection Equipment Can Boost OEE in the Pharmaceutical Industry
 |
March 29, 2017 -
Overall
equipment effectiveness (OEE) scores tend to be lower in the
pharmaceutical industry compared to other industries. This is largely
due to the increased number of small batch runs, resulting in frequent
product changeovers which present more opportunities for problems to
exist. In addition, the production process itself must go through
numerous quality control and serialization steps which adds further
schedule loss and gives any unscheduled downtime a negative effect on
the score.
Mettler Toledo's new white paper 'OEE and Product
Inspection - Efficiency in the Pharmaceutical Industry' summarizes the
various components that go into measuring OEE and describes how product
inspection equipment can lift OEE.
The eight-page paper begins
by defining OEE as the ratio of actual production output divided by
maximum potential output, and explains how the following three factors
are used to calculate a production line's OEE score - Availability,
Performance and Quality.
Availability is the measurement of how often a system is up and running as expected and is calculated by taking the ratio of actual versus scheduled production time.
Performance is calculated by taking the run time and taking away any time spent due to performance loss.
Quality measures the number of products produced minus the number of products which fail to meet quality standards.
A
change in any of these factors will result in a change in OEE, and
understanding what goes into each factor will help pharmaceutical
manufacturers to determine where changes to the production process can
be made to improve OEE.
What is a Good OEE Score?
The
paper goes on to explain that the recommended target OEE score for
pharmaceutical manufacturers is 85, although any score in the 80s is
considered to be ideal. Readers are then shown how to calculate OEE
using data on Availability, Performance and Quality.
Pharmaceutical-Specific Challenges and OEE
The main body of the white paper explains how the installation and use of product inspection equipment can affect each factor of the OEE calculation. Crucially, readers will discover how the latest in-line product inspection solutions can boost OEE by:
Reducing re-work times through removing products which fail to meet quality control standards or governmental regulations earlier in the production process
Avoiding unscheduled downtime by preventing damage to production equipment through earlier detection and rejection of contaminants
Streamlining product changeovers by supporting centralized control and automated profile changes
Reducing maintenance time with easily-accessible parts
Helping personnel address system faults quickly with onboard diagnostics, maintenance scheduling capabilities and early warning alerts
Preventing unscheduled downtime by displaying runtime data which can be used to diagnose the health of other production equipment
Reducing the odds of a defective product making its way out of the production facility
Explaining what caused a product to be rejected, helping to identify recurring errors in the production process
Removing defective products and quickly alerting personnel to production errors, reducing the amount of poor quality product created as corrections can be made before more rework's required
Providing valuable runtime data which can help demonstrate due diligence, as well as illuminate areas for improvement, further increasing OEE
The paper
concludes by emphasizing that improving OEE involves both time and
money, but the benefits make it worthwhile as OEE allows for the
creation of a roadmap to improve production processes. It highlights
areas which require closer scrutiny, and serves as a measurable
indication of process improvements. When properly utilized, it's a
critical part of the quality control process, increasing efficiency and
profitability.
