PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT USING ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS AND OVERALL EQUIPMENT EFFECTIVENESS (OEE): CASE STUDY

Improving productivity using an efficient measurement approach is essential for any manufacturer. One of the most used approaches that significantly value the current situation is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) by intending to reduce breakdowns to increase the performance. Underutilized machinery, over-utilized machinery, and poor maintenance are leading to waste of the company's resources. In this case study, a comprehensive analysis has been conducted that never been done in the company to ensure a high utilization rate. It has been observed that some of the machines in the production line are idle and unused. The main objective of this research is to improve the productivity of one of the manufacturers of a concrete pole by determining the current Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) value of the most critical machines in the production line, analyse the causes of losses. To achieve the objective, the following three steps were conducted: (i) data collection and analysis, (ii) collection of in-depth information about the raw material and the production line using visual investigation, history, and (iii) in-depth interview with the key stakeholders in the company. A nine-metre concrete pole production line was selected to conduct the study. The research is focused on to identify the most critical machines on the production line. Those machines were selected by using multi-criteria decision-making method Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Three consecutive steps were conducted: computing the vector of criteria weights, computing the option scores' matrix, and ranking the options. Six alternatives were considered. In AHP calculations, four machines were selected to perform this study: top cage machine, wire cage machine, wire straightening machine, and concrete pump injection machine. Rank number one is the highest percentage of 32.9%, which is a frequent breakdown. The second highest rate is 29.4%, which is machine that are producing primary parts of the final product. The third-highest percentage is 22.4%, which are the machines that have historical production data. The OEE for the selected machines was conducted by calculating the quality level, performance, and availability. The result shows that the wire straightening machine's performance score was satisfactory with OEE of 85.17%. In contrast, the wire caging machine, top caging machine, and the concrete pump injection machine were found to have unsatisfactory OEE scores of 54.3%, 15.37%, and 68.84%, respectively. As a result, OEE can drive the company improvement by providing a better understanding of the losses that give a real metric to improve productivity and better utilization for the company resources.