A fuzzy temporal approach to the Overall Equipment Effectiveness measurement

This study deals with the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) subject and its associated performance expressions. The aim of the developed research is to provide useful pieces of information for the decision-making when looking for the improvement of such a productivity indicator. As an extension of literature and industrial practice of the OEE proposals, we propose here to focus on a temporal performance expression model that provides the achievement degree of the considered objective in respectively: an instantaneous way, a trend way and a predictive way. The basic assumption of this work is that the way of expressing performance depends on the nature of the actions that are associated with the considered objective achievement, be they either short-term reactive actions or long-term planned actions, which particularly characterises the OEE. Thus, short-term reactive control will be based on instantaneous performance expression, while trend performance expressions are proposed for observations, adjustments and planifications, leading moreover to providing some elements concerning the predictive performance expressions in the long-term. A fuzzy processing, whose purpose, according to the visual management principles, is the expression of both numerical and symbolic information, is developed. The proposed model is illustrated by the Production stops reduction case of the Fournier Company, by considering the daily as well as the weekly and semi-annually OEE practice of the company. Some concluding remarks will finally allow the relevance of the proposed model and the extensions to bring to it to be analysed.