Mark Breunig, regional product manager, Videojet01.16.14
In a sluggish economy, personal care manufacturers and beauty packaging companies need to make every second of production time count.
Uptime is vitally important to Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), one of the most widely used measurement systems for helping producers understand their operations and drive continuous improvement.OEE is the measure of how closely the production line’s actual performance tracks to its theoretical performance limits, with uptime playing a crucial role.
A 2012 preventive maintenance survey of companies across numerous industries found a wide range in the average cost per hour of unplanned downtime, with nearly half citing downtime losses of more than $10,000 per hour.
Steps to Take
To minimize losses, personal care companies first need to investigate root causes, as well as both direct and indirect costs of unplanned downtime.
Once these costs have been realistically estimated, it becomes apparent that even a fractional increase in unplanned downtime can have a powerful effect on revenues and margins.
OEE objectively measures actual manufacturing unit performance against theoretically ideal performance to identify costly problem areas.
Most OEE methods focus on three key measures: availability, performance and quality.
If a machine isn’t running at all, there’s no opportunity for improving OEE. Therefore, uptime is the keystone that everything else depends upon.
A key piece to any personal care manufacturing and packaging line – and a critical element in the overall uptime performance of the line – is the marking and coding equipment.
To help minimize unplanned downtime, these printers should provide availability, quality and performance data. Not just data about when the printer was down and what technical errors occurred, but information that can be used to identify and fix the errors.
The most advanced continuous ink jet printers provide this actionable information along with features and functionality to maintain continuous operation, including advanced ink calibration capabilities and optimal printhead design.
Having proper maintenance procedures in place can help minimize the frequency and duration of planned and unplanned downtime. Ultimately, the solution is to find a printing equipment vendor who understands your need to maximize productivity.
