The importance of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

Increasing (international) competition, rising cost pressure, a massive shortage of skilled workers, the Internet of Things and much more. As a manufacturing company, you face a variety of challenges these days. In addition, there are everyday challenges such as the maintenance and servicing of machines and systems.

In order to remain successful on the market, one thing counts above all: the highest possible productivity of your machines and systems. The most important key figure for measuring this – and therefore also increasing it – is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). The OEE value indicates how well your machines and systems are being used in comparison to their full potential during the planned production times. Losses in the areas of availability, performance and quality can thus be better identified and quantified.

But how do you increase the OEE in your company?

Unplanned downtimes are a key factor. Of course, because lower system availability equals lower OEE. But how do you avoid downtime? By addressing the cause. In addition to human error and a lack of materials, this is primarily due to unplanned component and system failures. Failures of small components such as pneumatic cylinders in particular can have a major impact.

Yet you could easily avoid such failures in production and improve overall equipment effectiveness.

Increase OEE with predictive maintenance

Just one minute of unplanned downtime can cost up to 10,000 euros (in an expensive production facility)! That's 10,000 good reasons to revise and optimize outdated maintenance concepts. Especially as a large proportion of unplanned downtimes due to the failure of components such as pneumatic cylinders can be easily avoided – using predictive maintenance.

Predictive maintenance with AI solutions

But what exactly is predictive maintenance?

Continuous condition monitoring of machines and systems enables critical events or creeping deviations to be detected at an early stage. Sensors on your machines and systems collect and send data that is forwarded to the system or artificial intelligence. And based on the values and calculations obtained, an AI derives suitable maintenance and repair measures.

This means that not only is the current status of components such as pneumatic cylinders monitored, but potential faults and anomalies in the systems are also predicted. This prevents unplanned downtime, as maintenance and servicing are initiated before faults occur.

Predictive maintenance in practice: monitoring cylinders

Classic tools such as operating or machine data acquisition have been used for a long time for diagnostics and root cause analysis.

However, they have some disadvantages compared to predictive maintenance:

• They completely ignore a lot of data and correlations
• They are far too complex and too expensive in traditional programming
• They do not provide forward-looking forecasts
• You do not derive measures at an early stage

The solution: Festo AX Industrial Apps

With standardized AI apps for predictive maintenance, Festo makes predictive maintenance accessible and scalable for everyone. Like Festo AX Motions Insights Pneumatic: the AI app for pneumatic cylinders from all manufacturers. The app immediately detects anomalies and malfunctions in pneumatic drives or the control chain, helping to prevent machine downtime due to component failure.

Conclusion and outlook for the Internet of Things

Optimizing overall equipment effectiveness using predictive maintenance is an important step for manufacturing companies towards greater efficiency and competitiveness. By integrating AI solutions such as Festo AX Motions Insights Pneumatic into your systems, you can easily improve maintenance and servicing and minimize unplanned downtimes. AI enables you to optimize your production and the key figures in your company.

Future developments and trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning will continue to improve and spread predictive maintenance solutions. This means that companies that already rely on AI solutions can increase their OEE figures and secure a clear competitive edge. So what are you waiting for?