In the fast-evolving world of manufacturing, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) has become a gold standard for measuring productivity. Yet, despite its widespread adoption, most organisations struggle to achieve world-class benchmarks of 85%.
Consider a research article from Mälardalen University, Sweden, which examines the variation in Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) across different industry sectors. It questions whether there is an 85% world-class benchmark for OEE, revealing a variance of 50% to 85% OEE and noting a significant loss attributed to “unidentified disturbances” ranging from 36% to 65%.
In the 30 years I have worked in the industry, nearly 50 per cent of OEE projects fail to deliver the expected results. The reasons are complex, but they often overlook critical factors beyond solely focusing on equipment performance.
With the production process for manufacturing and process industries, a broader focus is required to consider the wider disruption accruing in the operational space. Lean manufacturing looks at where value is added, and waste occurs beyond the assets themselves. Combining this with digitalisation can create a Digital Lean approach that supports a wider Disruption Management programme utilising timely and effective digital communication tools.
Questions to ask are: Wouldn’t it be more effective to monitor operations in real-time and utilising AI to detect recurring patterns and alert teams to potential issues before they occur?
Unlike manual entry / paper systems that react to past events, this proactive approach enhances efficiency and minimises disruptions. Why wait until the end of the week to discuss an issue and incur all the associated losses and disruption when digital tools can alert / suggest corrective actions more effectively and to the right people.
In contrast, Disruption Management focuses on proactively identifying and mitigating challenges across people, processes, production, and culture. Together, they create a resilient, data-driven environment that anticipates disruptions, ensures agility, and supports continuous improvement. This enables businesses to achieve sustainable growth and maintain competitiveness in a dynamic market. Disruption management tackles factors that hinder operational efficiency, ensuring smoother workflows and optimised resource use.
OEE, at its core, measures the percentage of planned manufacturing time that is genuinely productive. While it sounds straightforward, its application often falls short because it focuses too narrowly on equipment metrics, neglecting the broader influences of people, supporting processes, production, and organisational culture. These elements are the hidden forces that often determine the success or failure of an OEE initiative.
As a vendor, we trust that disruption management bridges this gap by providing a comprehensive framework beyond the equipment to address inefficiencies and challenges across the production ecosystem. This approach ensures that organisations measure productivity and actively manage the disruptions that undermine it.
Why OEE projects falter
One of the most significant pitfalls in OEE projects is the overreliance on digital solutions as a silver bullet. Many companies assume that installing a digital OEE system will automatically improve performance. However, these systems are only as effective as the environment in which they operate. These tools often fail to deliver their promised value without a robust continuous improvement program that integrates OEE metrics into the broader manufacturing strategy.
Moreover, traditional paper-based OEE systems are reactive, providing insights only after disruptions occur. Even with digital solutions, many organisations fail to consider how these tools interact with existing processes or how the workforce will adopt them. The result is an incomplete approach focusing on equipment performance in isolation, ignoring the significant role of people, workflows, and cultural dynamics.
The role of disruption management
Disruption management offers a holistic approach to manufacturing efficiency. It addresses the root causes of interruptions and interferences, incorporating real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, change management and collaborative tools to identify and mitigate potential issues before they escalate. Disruption management ensures that OEE initiatives are effective and sustainable by focusing on people, processes, production, and culture.
The danger of failure comes as most effective OEE programmes can rapidly get to an OEE result of 50% and get stuck. It is the additional insight and management of external disruption to drive and achieve 85% and maintain these improvements successfully.
For example, workforce engagement is a critical area where disruption management adds value. Employees often feel disconnected from OEE systems, especially when these systems appear to prioritise equipment over people. This disconnect can lead to resistance, reduced morale and lower productivity. Disruption management tackles this challenge by involving employees in designing and implementing OEE systems, ensuring that these tools support their daily tasks and address their pain points.
Another key advantage of disruption management is its ability to integrate quality assurance into the production process. Many OEE systems overlook the quality component, focusing instead on maximising output. However, poor quality can have a cascading effect on production efficiency, leading to higher scrap rates, rework and delays. By incorporating real-time quality monitoring and feedback loops, disruption management ensures that production goals do not come at the expense of product standards.
Strategies to boost efficiency by tackling key operational disruption associated with people, processes, production, and culture
People
An organisation’s success hinges on its people. Skill gaps from inadequate training and low engagement hinder OEE targets. Companies must prioritise ongoing training and create a culture where employees feel valued and motivated to optimise performance and achieve goals.
Enhanced training and flexibility: OEE’s focus on machinery can leave employees feeling undervalued, reducing motivation and engagement in overall improvements. To counter this, it is imperative to cross-train staff to handle disruptions and share their production expertise. Embed this knowledge into digital systems to predict disruptions in real-time. Use simulation and digital twin technologies to enhance training, create a central knowledge repository, and record insights for operational improvements. Collaboration ensures efficiency and better disruption management.
Improved communication: Overemphasis on equipment improvements may create a surveillance culture, lowering staff morale and hindering communication, ultimately causing disruptions. Effective disruption management relies on clear communication to keep teams informed and engaged while reducing resistance to change. Digital tools, like Microsoft Teams, streamline communication and send alerts about low-quality materials or issues with quality. Timely notifications ensure the right people respond quickly, minimising disruption and boosting efficiency in large-scale operations.
Process
Inefficient processes are a significant barrier to meeting OEE targets. Adopting lean manufacturing principles and regularly optimising processes can eliminate waste and boost productivity.
Understanding your maintenance team capacity: OEE often emphasises equipment and staff interactions, but many downtimes result from delayed responses by support services. With such challenges, digital disruption management streamlines help requests. A single button triggers prioritised support, queues disruptions based on impact, and directs resources to critical events. This system assesses resource availability and ensures timely responses, optimising support efficiency and minimising production interruptions.
Active utility consumption: Typically, with OEE, a manufacturer wants to maximise the production rate, but at what cost? Pushing processes too hard impacts quality, rework, speed, and energy use. Metrics like ‘kWh per unit produced’ connect energy consumption to efficiency. With sustainability and net zero goals now as priorities, balancing productivity with resource optimisation is essential to achieving operational and environmental success. The renewed focus on WAGES (Water, Air, Gas, Electricity, Steam) real-time solution is a good starting point. It allows a monitoring and targeting energy optimisation programme to get the desired results.
Production
Overlooking the quality aspect of OEE disrupts production, increasing defects, scrap, and rework. This wastes materials, delays schedules, and impacts supply chains, leading to higher costs, customer dissatisfaction, and a damaged reputation. Prioritising quality is essential for efficiency and sustained success in production.
Real-time quality assurance: Most operations managers are pressured to meet targets, and increasing equipment speed often harms quality. Many OEE systems overlook real-time quality management, leading operators to prioritise output. This results in defective products reaching customers, ultimately affecting efficiency and customer satisfaction. Balancing speed and quality is essential for sustainable production success. A disruption management system connects quality teams with production workflows, enabling timely, automated, or manual communication for rapid response.
Furthermore, AI and machine learning are crucial in reducing quality losses by identifying recurring trends and sending automatic alerts to operational and quality teams. These predictive insights provide early warnings of potential quality issues and suggest corrective actions before they occur. Integrating such technologies enhances decision-making, minimises rework, and improves overall production efficiency, ensuring consistent product quality and reducing waste.
Adaptability to product changes: Producing varied products increases machine setup complexity and inventory challenges, which can impact product quality and cause excessive downtime if mismanaged. Using disruption management, standardised work procedures reduce variability by ensuring consistent methods among operators. Regular training and audits reinforce standards, improve consistency, and make identifying and addressing issues impacting OEE easier. This approach streamlines operations and enhances overall efficiency.
Culture
A company’s culture plays a key role in meeting OEE targets. A lack of focus on continuous improvement or innovation can hinder progress, so leadership must foster a culture of excellence where improvement is ingrained. Promoting open communication, collaboration, and a shared commitment to OEE goals can drive success.
Engage employees early and often: A culture prioritising equipment over people and processes breeds resistance to change. Employees may dismiss OEE’s value if it fails to address their daily challenges. The solution is to involve employees from the start of the OEE process. Communicate its benefits clearly, highlighting how it simplifies their work. Actively seek feedback and integrate their insights during implementation. This inclusive approach fosters early disruption identification, builds ownership, and boosts employee engagement and value.
Foster inclusion to address cultural misalignment: Adopting technology without strategic planning is ineffective. Technology alone isn’t a solution; its implementation must align with business-wide understanding and careful planning. The answer is simple: adopt OEE and digital technology as a collaborative effort involving employees from the planning stage. Provide ongoing support and training while celebrating small achievements to maintain momentum. Fostering a culture that values team contributions and mutual growth helps overcome resistance and ensures a seamless transition.
Real-world applications
The benefits of integrating disruption management into OEE strategies are evident across industries. For example, we recently supported a packaging manufacturer that reduced downtime by 30% using predictive analytics to anticipate and address disruptions.
Similarly, we helped a nuclear client improve environmental monitoring and compliance and reduce production losses by several hundred thousand pounds annually. This was achieved using a holistic approach to data management. It combined and contextualised the client’s data collection and surfaced it across their OT and IT domains using rich visualisation tools and machine learning (ML) models to help analyse and proactively address environmental and process challenges.
Looking ahead
As the manufacturing industry evolves, disruption management will become increasingly important. By addressing the broader context of people, processes, production, and culture, organisations can unlock new levels of productivity and resilience. OEE is a powerful tool, but its true potential lies in integrating strategies that actively manage disruptions and drive continuous improvement.
In a competitive landscape where efficiency and sustainability are paramount, anticipating and mitigating disruptions is a decisive advantage. Disruption management enhances the effectiveness of OEE initiatives and ensures that these efforts contribute to broader business objectives, from customer satisfaction to environmental stewardship.
Richard Stone, Head of Digital at Capula
Richard Stone has over thirty years of experience in industrial digitalisation and operational technology. He currently heads Digital at Capula and spearheads the Smart Digital Operations (SDO) service, which drives business transformation through intelligent technologies.
Richard has held key leadership positions throughout his extensive career, including Managing Director at Cimlogic, Director at Deloitte focusing on Industry 4.0, and Head of Digital Manufacturing at Atos.
Passionate about delivering measurable outcomes, he integrates people, processes, production, and culture to help businesses achieve efficiency, resilience, and sustainability in an evolving industrial landscape.
Richard is married and has two adult children. Outside of work, he enjoys sailing, repairing classic cars, and playing in a brass band when time permits.
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