As a commercial laundry manager, there are a lot of responsibilities on your plate. One of those duties is timely maintenance to ensure operational equipment efficiency or OEE. Ensuring OEE is at optimal levels is an important responsibility. It generates several positive effects that can ripple across your business. What is OEE? What are its benefits to your commercial laundry? How do you measure it with commercial laundry software? That’s what I explain in this blog.
What Is OEE?
Overall Equipment Effectiveness identifies the percentage of time where machines are truly productive. In the manufacturing industry, OEE is an essential metric to determine productivity. The metric compares the quality of the final product against running time. In the context of commercial laundry solutions, OEE indicates how many kilos of linen were cleaned at an acceptable standard and compared against run times.
When you measure OEE, you are measuring two factors: The quality of your equipment and your production workflows. For example, if the OEE score gives a 100% that means all your equipment is always delivering high quality during operating hours.
Of course, it is not possible to maintain 100% on a consistent basis. Nevertheless, OEE is a useful commercial laundry KPI to determine how efficient your commercial laundry is. By using this metric, you answer several questions – Is your commercial laundry equipment efficient? Are your current workflows churning out output at an acceptable rate?
Furthermore, you can set several benchmarks that are core to business performance. You can use the metric to identify inefficiencies, note progress, and determine productivity.
But, this brings us to an important question – What is the best method for measuring OEE? Commercial laundry platforms are the perfect solution.
Maximising OEE with commercial laundry solutions
Commercial laundry software can help you maximise Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Here are some ways the software can help.
Laundry software can measure performance in real-time
Commercial laundry solutions can measure business performance in real-time. An essential component of monitoring OEE is determining how laundry equipment runs. It is challenging to determine how well commercial laundry equipment is performing because getting real-time data is difficult. But, commercial laundry solutions can get you the data you need. The software collects data from different devices and analyses the data and to reveal useful findings in real-time.
Use management dashboard screens to oversee operations
Overseeing laundry operations is no easy task. You have to account for the operational efficiency of each piece of commercial laundry equipment across the floor area. Fortunately, you don’t have to. Commercial laundry solutions come with dashboard screens that can display data from each piece of laundry equipment. As the laundry manager, you can oversee the state of operations by examining data in real-time to determine OEE levels. You can choose to view the state of operations in real-time or you can choose from a date range, if you wish to select a specific criteria.
You can monitor staff operations in real-time
Of course, laundry machinery is one-half of the OEE equation. Staff operations are very important as well because it plays a huge role in workflow productivity. They oversee many operations that cannot be completed by a machine, certain staff are also responsible for overseeing equipment maintenance, contributing directly to the overall efficiency of the commercial laundry plant.
But, it can be difficult to determine how well staff are performing because as a floor manager, you cannot be everywhere at once. This is where commercial laundry platforms become an integral part of operations. Using the software, you can measure how well staff members are performing and make sure they are meeting their targets.
Maximising efficiency with commercial laundry software
OEE is a crucial metric for any commercial laundry to follow. It can give you the insight needed to take preemptive measures to ensure your laundry equipment is in optimal condition and deliver the necessary output on time. But, one of the more effective ways to oversee laundry operations is to have the right software infrastructure in place. The software can help you monitor OEE while making your job much easier.
Visit Bundle Laundry to learn how you can use commercial laundry software to manage laundry operations and boost productivity.