When people don’t work directly on a production or assembly line, OEE and OLE (overall labor effectiveness) aren’t the most useful tools to check their performance and effectiveness. For these types of work, you can borrow an efficiency tools that comes from maintenance: Hands-on-Tool-Time, or HOTT. With this tool we don’t focus much on the effectiveness of the value added work itself, but rather on the time wasted on other activities. For a mechanic that’s things like searching for spare parts, walking all over the factory, and such non value added time sinks that are often a big part of their days.
This same system can also be used for other jobs where output isn’t easily measured, making it hard to compare shifts or days to each other to determine relative effectiveness.
It’ also a good way to spot inefficiencies and see where you can gain time for important things like planned maintenance (that always require extra upfront resources before you see their effect in reducing breakdown time).
#continuousimprovement #maintenance #labor