Equipment effectiveness: OEE revisited

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a metric that has been accepted completely in the semiconductor industry. OEE is simple and clear, and standards and guidelines have been developed. Nonetheless, literature indicates imperfections in applying OEE with regard to time base and rate efficiency. As literature lacks a basic framework for OEE, effectiveness has been approached systematically that resulted in a new equipment effectiveness E. The main difference between OEE and E concerns the choice of the time base. OEE does include equipment-independent conditions, such as lack of input items. This condition is not caused by the equipment but by the environment of the equipment. E has been defined to get a performance measure that is related to equipment-dependent states only, viz. effective state consisting of productive state, scheduled down state, and unscheduled down state. Because of the stand-alone condition, the equipment effectiveness expresses the (equipment) internal losses, while utilization expresses the external losses. By using E, equipment can be compared and improved. It can be concluded that the advantage of E over OEE is that real equipment effectiveness is measured as the influence of utilization (equipment-independent conditions) is eliminated.