The six big losses are the classic way to sort everything that pulls OEE down. Two belong to Availability: breakdowns and setup or changeover time. Two belong to Performance: minor stops and reduced speed. Two belong to Quality: start-up rejects made while the line settles after a changeover, and production rejects made during steady running. Every loss you find on a bottling line fits one of the six.
Collecting the data per shift does not need software. One sheet per line per shift with start time, planned breaks, a downtime log (start, end, reason), the counter reading at the end, and a reject tally by reason gives you everything. The operator fills it in as events happen, not from memory at the end. A supervisor calculates the three factors the next morning and posts them.
Choosing what to attack first is arithmetic. Convert each factor into lost percentage points and compare. A factor at 0.82 is losing 18 points; a factor at 0.98 is losing 2. Work on the biggest bucket, then use the reason tallies inside that bucket to pick the single largest cause. Improving changeovers from 40 minutes to 25 on a line that changes over three times a shift returns 45 minutes a shift, which is worth more than any label-defect project.
Standard Procedure
- 1Print one OEE data sheet per line per shift with sections for stops, counts and rejects.
- 2Have the operator log each stop as it ends, with a reason from a short fixed list.
- 3Calculate Availability, Performance and Quality the next morning and post them beside the line.
- 4Convert each factor to lost percentage points and rank the three.
- 5Inside the largest bucket, rank reasons by minutes or units lost and start with the top one.
Lesson Summary
- ✓The six big losses map directly onto the three OEE factors, so a sorted log already tells you where the problem lives.
- ✓Per-shift paper data collected in real time beats end-of-week estimates every time.