OVERALL EQUIPMENT EFFECTIVENESS (OEE) FOR DIAGNOSIS AND PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT IN THE FOUNDRY INDUSTRY

The aim of this article was to describe the implementation of the overall Equipment Effectiveness indicator (Overall Equipment Effectiveness-OEE) into a foundry company of the mechanical industry. The research method was the case study. The research problem raised of the need of the company to know its effective capacity of serve customers, not only the nominal capacity of the equipment. To do so, it was accepted the assumption that the capacity can be estimated with the help of the OEE. Production data were rearranged in reports that allowed calculating the OEE. Based on the calculated result of the OEE, it was established that the most promising actions for further improvements were related to the availability of machines. After six months of corrective actions, the availability has grown from 30% to 78%. This increase, combined with changes in other parameters, elevated the OEE from 23% to 38%, with the significant gain of more than 15 percentage points in time available for production. Before the study, the estimated capacity and consequently the goal were production of 17,900 kg per day. After the study, based on calculations and field measurements, the production goal became to 19,200 kg per day.