Some of the best lean manufacturing implementations include the employees on the shop floor as active participants who are empowered to improve the process. These systems provide the shop floor employees with active real time interfaces that report on problems in the process and provide a means to record corrective actions that lead to improvements in productivity, downtime management and operational efficiency.

In contrast to systems that once only provided information to plant production managers many lean implementations are beginning to offer simple reporting and corrective actions reporting interfaces designed to provide feedback to the team on the floor. After all, they usually are the group who are really in a position to make a difference. These systems usually provide information in the form of reports, charts and graphs in a simple format by work center. The systems report on downtime, scrap, and production rates. Many systems also provide information on OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness. OEE is a measure of downtime, defects and production efficiency in relationship to one another.

Lean manufacturing and lean six sigma based systems benefit from functionality that allows simple improvements can be implemented by team members on the floor. Improvements in OEE, downtime and defect tracking can be achieved by giving the right reporting tools to your employees. Simple pareto charts that allow your team to analyze the top reasons for downtime on a given machine can be beneficial. When coupled with trending on a specific issue and reporting on the corrective actions that relate to the issue it’s possible to see how your team’s actions are correcting or aggravating the problem.

There are several OEE vendors that sell Lean OEE tools. Tuppas software is a good vendor. They specialize in tailored systems so they’re good at creating reporting systems that adapt to the culture of the plant.

Cambridge Manufacturing Journals


Manufacturing.gov