Monitoring of overall equipment effectiveness by multivariate statistical process control
Authors: Mjimer Imane , Aoula ES-Saadia , Achouyab EL Hassan 
Published: July 2021

Purpose

This study aims to monitor the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) indicator that is one of the best indicators used to monitor the performance of the company by the multivariate control chart.

Design/methodology/approach

To improve continually the performance of a company, many research studies tend to apply Lean six sigma approach. It is one of the best ways used to reduce the variability in the process by using the univariate control chart to know the trend of the variable and make the action before process deviation. Nevertheless, and when the need is to monitor two or more correlated characteristics simultaneously, the univariate control chart will be unable to do it, and the multivariate control chart will be the best way to successfully monitor the correlated characteristics.

Findings

For this study, the authors have applied the multivariate control chart to control the OEE performance rate which is composed by the quality rate, performance rate and availability rate, and the relative work from which the authors have adopted the same methodology (Hadian and Rahimifard, 2019) was done for project monitoring, which is done by following different indicators such as cost, and time; the results of this work shows that by applying this tool, all project staff can meet the project timing with the cost already defined at the beginning of the project. The idea of monitoring the OEE rate comes because the OEE contains the three correlated indicators, we can’t do the monitoring of the OEE just by following one of the three because data change and if today we have the performance and quality rate are stable, and the availability is not, tomorrow we can another indicator impacted and, in this case, the univariate control chart can’t response to our demand. That’s why we have choose the multivariate control chart to prevent the trend of OEE performance rate. Otherwise, and according to production planning work, they try to prevent the downtime by switching to other references, but after applying the OEE monitoring using the multivariate control chart, the company can do the monitoring of his ability to deliver the good product at time to meet customer demand.

Research limitations/implications

The application was done per day, it will be good to apply it per shift in order to have the ability to take the fast reaction in case of process deviation. The other perspective point we can have is to supervise the process according to the control limits found and see if the process still under control after the implementation of the Multivariate control chart at the OEE Rate and if we still be able to meet customer demand in terms of Quantity and Quality of the product by preventing the process deviation using multivariate control chart.

Practical implications

The implication of this work is to provide to the managers the trend of the performance of the workshop by measuring the OEE rate and by following if the process still under control limits, if not the reaction plan shall be established before the process become out of control.

Originality/value

The OEE indicator is one of the effective indicators used to monitor the ability of the company to produce good final product, and the monitoring of this indicator will give the company a visibility of the trend of performance. For this reason, the authors have applied the multivariate control chart to supervise the company performance. This indicator is composed by three different rates: quality, performance and availability rate, and because this tree rates are correlated, the authors have tried to search the best tool which will give them the possibility to monitor the OEE rate. After literature review, the authors found that many works have used the multivariate control chart, especially in the field of project: to monitor the time and cost simultaneously. After that, the authors have applied the same approach to monitor the OEE rate which has the same objective : to monitor the quality, performance and availability rate in the same time.