Factoring In Efficiency

As the pharma industry looks to produce more with existing assets and reduced costs, OEE
(overall equipment effectiveness) has emerged as a best practice tool for assessing production-line efficiency.
Equipment vendors are supporting OEE by designing higher-performance machines, building in information-gathering capability, and assisting customers with their OEE evaluations.

OEE is an approach for identifying packaging line problems and deriving quantified intelligence that can be used for improving efficiency. As it promises to boost line output, OEE supports sustainability by reducing energy use and raw materials.

During PMP News’s Sustainability 102 Webcast on Packaging Line Efficiency, attendees were asked about factors motivating them to automate their lines. Poll results released during the Webcast initially indicated that 66.6% sought to reduce labor, while 33.3% wanted to increase line speed. Final poll results are above, based on the responses of 26 attendees.

“The thing I like about OEE is that it breaks down all your processes into mathematical data from which you can make good decisions,” says Mel Bahr, chairman, MGS Machine Corp. (Maple Grove, MN).

“OEE is often misunderstood as pertaining only to machine efficiency, rather than the whole process. It is a tool for analyzing the operation of a line,” Bahr adds.

Bahr spoke about OEE and other efficiency considerations during PMP News’s exclusive Webcast, “Packaging Line Efficiency,” in June 2009. (The event is archived at www.pmpnews.com/
webinars for complimentary viewing.)

Also speaking during the Webcast were Ed Wood, director of sales, medical-consumer-industrial div., and Justin Pottorf, automations manager, Multivac Inc. (Kansas City, MO); and Scott Klages, vice president of sales and senior manufacturing consultant, Parsec Automation Group (Brea, CA).

In the OEE process, actual production information is measured against ideal performance. Results are analyzed for targeting improvements in three areas: performance, which is affected by line speed and short stops; availability, a metric impacted by changeovers and cleaning times; and quality, accounting for rejects and waste.

“OEE looks not only at efficiency, but also availability, and it rolls in the quality component. OEE has become a gold standard method in the pharma industry, where substantial benefits can be gained from relatively small improvements in OEE,” says Klages.

Despite the growing focus on OEE measurement, typical line OEE for pharma is reported at 30 to 40%, trailing industries such as the food sector. “Industry benchmarks have shown that achievable world class OEE for pharma packaging is 75%. This gap has [spurred] several of the larger pharma companies to implement OEE improvement initiatives on all critical packaging assets such as high-speed automated lines,” Klages says.

“We have seen a number of these companies make corporate-level selection of performance management software, rather than allowing each plant to make its own choice,” he adds.

In the area of sustainability, OEE identifies opportunities for minimizing energy use and waste. Managers can assess the effect on line efficiency of new package configurations designed to alleviate environmental impact, for example, light weighting and increased recycled content.

“There is a direct relationship between efficiency and sustainability. Most lines have the potential to improve output per hour by 20% or more, leading to energy savings of about 10% per unit produced. The energy savings are significant if you can reduce the number of shifts running. You receive ancillary benefits such as reducing overtime expenses if you move from seven-day to five-day- per-week production,” Klages says.

During the Sustainability 102 Webcast, attendees were asked about automation roadblocks. Poll results released during the Webcast initially indicated that budget was hindering 100% of the current projects. Final poll results are above, based on the responses of 16 attendees. The “Other” option was selected by 0%.

DESIGNED FOR PERFORMANCE
Machine performance is a key factor in line efficiency and OEE scores. In custom-building end-of-line equipment to each application, Schneider Packaging Equipment (Brewerton, NY) “designs efficiency into every machine from the ground up,” says Terry Zarnowski, director of sales and marketing.

“Our president, Rick Schneider, likes to say that every product has a personality [relating to] how it handles in its true production environment. We design the machine to accommodate a product’s dimensional tolerances and other variables. Coated materials, for example, might create production issues related to plant temperature variances. If you are using standard equipment that wasn’t designed to handle the product, you will be tweaking and adjusting settings, and your OEE will go down,” Zarnowski says.

Schneider case packers and palletizers feature safety guarding access and other design features that enable fast recovery from jam ups. “You can recover gracefully from jams by just removing the damaged piece or product instead of clearing the whole machine,” Zarnowski says.

“Many of our customers will specify machine operating efficiency (OE), which relates directly to OEE. We can guarantee an OE ratio based on our knowledge of the machine’s performance. OE is the ratio of machine available time to operate versus the time it is actually producing. If the machine stops for any reason other than that it runs out of product that counts against the ratio,” he says.

OEE also has an impact on total cost of ownership. “We use cost-effectiveness as a selling point. Every square foot of plant space has a dollar value associated with it. The further from 100% operating efficiency, the higher the cost per unit produced,” Zarnowski says.

MGS Machine in-feed devices and cartoners and casepackers are used upstream and downstream on a thermoforming line. MGS engineers will assess customer lines for part wear and tear, suggesting improvements in material flow and line control. The company provides customers with spreadsheet tools for evaluating lines’ performance.

“As a supplier of equipment primarily to pharma, we use OEE in our quoting process. We are constantly investigating methods to reduce lot change and room and equipment cleaning downtime,” says Bahr.

Boundaries for people, materials, equipment, and processes are initially defined. A five-step process begins with logging performance data. A timeline log documents overall line effectiveness by shift. Data are collected on incoming product, run rate times per SKU, rejects, output, and cleaning and changeover times. “The number of days the line is logged depends on how long it takes to cycle through all of the activities on the line,” says Bahr.

During the Sustainability 102 Webcast, attendees were asked whether attempts to improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) were linked to company sustainability efforts. Poll results released during the Webcast initially indicated that most attendees linked OEE with sustainability and improvements were already underway. Final poll results are above, based on the responses of 15 attendees. The “Do not plan improvements option” was selected by 0%.

MAKING THE CASE FOR CHANGE
Individual machine performance is evaluated with a second run log, noting start and stop times and causes of faults. An optional machine run log can be used to evaluate a list of functions of a particular machine. “It is useful to incorporate a stop watch into the timeline and run logs,” Bahr says.

Data are analyzed to discover the causes of performance bottlenecks, and derive a list of proposed modifications. Changes could be in equipment upgrades, package redesign, material improvements, personnel changes, or training and production scheduling.

“You then establish a cost for each of the changes, and compare that to the increased annual revenue that would result. It is important to have a short, precise, graphical report to present to management,” Bahr says.
New data are then collected on the upgraded process for a results comparison.

Accumulators can improve a line’s efficiency in some applications, but may not always be the right answer for the best OEE.

“When we ship systems, we make sure the motions are optimized. An operator may believe that if they can speed up one machine or a subsystem on a machine, they will get more output. They may get a short burst of output, but OEE goes down because you have machines downstream that can’t cope with the volume, become less efficient, or produce lower-quality product at higher speeds,” says Zarnowski.

“The ideal solution is to match the speed and pace of the machines. When machine motion is tightly coupled, you can eliminate the use of a buffer. You then have less work-in-progress inventory, and less equipment sucking energy and taking up floor space,” he adds.

Bahr says an OEE analysis helps define locations where buffering will be beneficial. For example, accumulators can improve uptime on a bottle line that may have six or more major pieces of equipment.

“It is a common conception technique when specifying a line to have each machine run a percentage faster than the upstream equipment. If each machine is serially running 5% faster than the upstream, the end of line equipment will be running 25 to 27% faster than the first.

“The reason for running faster is a good one, but it’s not helpful if you don’t have accumulation. The better solution is to have accumulation at strategic locations with the equipment downstream of the accumulation running slightly faster. In one application, we were able to slow down a cartoner by 20% and improve its uptime by applying this technique,” he says.

MGS reduced downtime on another line by relocating an accumulator that was situated between a roll stock labeler and a cartoner. “Without an automatic splicer, the labeler would stop every 65 minutes for insertion of a new roll of labels. This took at least five minutes. We suggested the accumulation be moved to before the labeler.

“The cartoner had far less unplanned downtime than the planned downtime for the roll change of the labeler. Now the upstream equipment continues to run when you change label rolls. In this case, the labeler and cartoner could be increased in speed with minimum uptime loss,” Bahr says.

Sensor-captured data can be conveyed for viewing on an HMI screen and to enterprise systems for more in-depth analysis.

DATA COLLECTION
Schneider’s HMI-managed line sensor systems count cases and report on machine available time to run, idle time, and downtime. A rate gage logs average product per minute. For data analysis, customers use spreadsheets or send the data via plant network to a monitoring program, Zarnowski says.

“We have extensive data collection on each machine, for product counting, jams, rejects, and ejects,” says Bahr. “A time-stamped alarm list provides a log of the machine operation. These data are available viewed from an HMI screen and are transferred to SCADA or line supervisory systems for line control and monitoring.”

Parsec offers TrakSYS decision support software for measuring OEE. The software reports on line performance relating efficiency goals to historical performance. Data are pulled from PLCs and HMIs on the line, and enterprise MES and ERP systems. Operators can keep score in real-time through user interfaces, for comparing performance with established targets.

The software enables root-cause analysis of faults and displays charts that assist in showing which process changes will produce the highest return. A predictive maintenance feature provides metrics on mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to repair, so repairs can be anticipated before breakdowns occur.

“TrakSys relates to performance management, but also to operations management, as operators have continuous real-time visibility into the process,” says Klages.

Operators can select from pre-defined lists to provide reasons for line stoppages. “You can get a 5% pop in OEE just by making operators accountable on a real-time basis. This is huge in terms of output over the course of a year,” Klages says.

“Automated lines may experience 1000 short-stop failures per week, [such as those owing to] label jams, waiting for product, or running out of a component,” Klages says.

For customers without networked PLC communications, Parsec offers the SENSORTrak and LEANTrak products in which TrakSYS software is bundled with Ethernet-based sensors mounted to points on a line. “We can give you output, stoppages, availability, and OEE performance, with an interface that allows the operator to identify which machines are failing and why,” Klages says.

PART REDUCTION
The increasing use of robotics on pharma packaging lines has implications for OEE.

As a FANUC integrator, Schneider integrates vision-guided robotics into case packers and palletizers.
“When a conventional case packer is designed for an application, in most cases you will have a higher raw throughput [than with a robotic solution]. But robots allow reduction of hard automation parts. You are addressing MTBF by reducing machinery components,” says Zarnowski.

“MTBF is directly proportional to the number of moving piece parts and the complexity of the machine. FANUC claims up to and over 80,000 hours MTBF. For hard automation parts, MTBF might be in the hundreds of hours,” he says.

Robots have the additional advantage of flexibility. A case packer with a robot can accommodate a wide range of products, allowing faster changeover, he adds.

“Robotics have become very cost competitive. We have customers using three or four on a line, where they are reducing head count,” says Pottorf of Multivac. “With expertly implemented automation, you have the opportunity for cost savings, greater throughput, and superior quality control.”

Vision-guided robotics promote consistent FFS unit throughput. Vision systems can be deployed on a line for confirming product and product mix and print accuracy and readability. Automation is used at the pack-off stage to increase line speed and reduce labor costs, he says.

“Many customers are looking to take reject management beyond good and bad, and segment rejects based on type of fault. Product with print errors will go into a unique rework bin to minimize rework time,” Pottorf says.

NETWORKING
Wood, also of Multivac, says that OEE begins with a robust packaging system that can easily accommodate format changes and a wide range of materials and gages and that is scalable for future growth.

“Many of our customers are looking for push-button formats for changeover of multiple dies,” Wood says.

A line must be able to run 24/7, meet or exceed seal integrity requirements, and ensure stability of controls and process parameters, in a repeatable, validatable process, Wood says.

An OMAC-compliant open architecture control system supports easy integration of third-party equipment. Packaging platforms need to have sufficient memory to store production data and support 21 CFR Part 2 documentation.

“Lines need to have push capability to send data to MES for future reference and record keeping, as well as for OEE analysis,” he says.

Wood says one person should have total package line project responsibility.

A line control system can manage integrated components, controlled end-to-end from a central point. Integrated scanners and printers support track and trace, where dynamically printed serialized 2-D bar codes are associated with production data such as the operator ID and sealing temperatures. Items can be tracked through the production run and beyond.

“You can scan the bar code throughout the distribution system, and pull up production data for that package [along with its] visual image. This becomes a great way to eliminate counterfeiting issues,” Wood says. ■