Improvement of overall equipment efficiency (OEE) by total productive maintenance (TPM)-a case study

Abstract

There are a great number of public and private chemical plants inside the country. But this sector is running with many problems essentially the production loss due to downtime, process instability, and low product quality. TPM can solve this problem by improving OEE with little or no investment required. The most common goal of TPM is to maximize Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) by loss minimization and at the same time, increasing employee morale and job satisfaction. TPM reduces production losses by improving process instability, equipment availability and product quality. TPM makes it easier for the organization to improve OEE ratio by providing a formula to quantify losses, and by giving priority to the most important ones using its tools and techniques. This thesis describes the application of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) tools and techniques to identify the losses and to reduce them on priority basis to maximize the Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE). This work was done in Hydrogen Peroxide Plant of Samuda Chemical Complex Ltd, one of the largest private chemical manufacturing and processing companies of Bangladesh. Based on production capacity real data on losses and their corresponding causes were accumulated with a view to improve OEE. These losses were then classified into six major losses and the target was set to eliminate the most significant losses. WWBLA, a tool of TPM was used to reach at the root of the problem to eliminate them. Management was convinced and they performed the improvement work the study suggested. Ultimately the better OEE was found and there was also a positive impact of TPM on the organization at the end. The purpose of this study was to eliminate root causes of the losses by using TPM tools to improve OEE. It appears that the causes of losses are related mainly to process instability rather than equipment failure and also the performance rate and quality rate can be improved sooner rather than availability. A real understanding of this study may leads to improve present situation of chemical plants, which are facing the problem of lower OEE within the shortest possible time with little or no investment.