Manufacturing system modeling for productivity improvement

Competition and the drive for profits are forcing companies to implement various productivity improvement efforts. Implementation of total productive maintenance (TPM) techniques has led to significant productivity improvements for individual equipment, particularly in the semiconductor industry. The productivity improvements achieved at the equipment level are significant but insufficient because what a company really needs is a highly efficient system/factory. This is especially true in the discrete manufacturing industry. In this paper, an approach, based on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), is developed to model the productivity of a manufacturing system in terms of overall throughput effectiveness (OTE). Sensitivity analysis and theory of constraints are used to help identify productivity improvement opportunities. A real-world case study is presented to illustrate the applicability of the approach.