Human OEE
One of the things I love most about working in Manufacturing is seeing all of the creative ways people and companies find to measure processes and performance. I believe in the old saying that “Everything that can be measured doesn’t count, and everything that counts can’t be measured” which points to the human side of the company. However, I also believe in the business side which says, “If you aren’t measuring it, you’re just practicing” which points to the operation side of the business.
One of my favorite measures in manufacturing is OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) which looks at the performance of a piece of equipment across basically all facets. When done correctly, OEE shows a very hard and direct look at the performance of the machine. It basically looks at everything over a period of time and shows how well the machine is producing quality product against an “Ideal State”. Ideal state being 0 (zero) downtime, 0 speed loss, 0 quality issues, etc. So, if the machine ran perfectly at full speed you would have perfect OEE of 100%. Obviously, this is very hard to do which gives us Continuous Improvement fans a never-ending place to work!
I was working with a team the other day and it occurred to me, humans are much harder to measure. If they are doing production work/piece work, it becomes easier, but for anyone else it becomes much more challenging and frustratingly subjective. I started pondering what are those characteristics that we most need from our teammates to create a high-performing operation? Here is one potential take on an OEE Metric for humans.
Human OEE = Ownership, Empowerment and Execution
I’m not theorizing that this represents a perfect list, however, I will suggest to you that if the teams that I work with had more of these attributes in place, they would all be more effective and productive. Just for fun, let’s look at these in quick detail:
- Ownership: Ownership is demonstrated as one assumes responsibility over their tasks. They look for what needs to be done, and they get it done. They look for ways to improve things and they improve them. And most importantly, they work to avoid and prevent problems. If a problem does arise, they take responsibility to fix it and they communicate it appropriately. They truly “run it like they own it” as the saying goes.
- Empowerment: Empowerment means that the employees are willing to take the steps to make things better. The word empowerment is tossed around a lot and it is worth pointing out that empowerment is a two-way street. The leadership of the organization must make it ok and reinforce that they want an empowered culture. The employees must then assume that responsibility and be willing to work in that way. Too often I see leadership that stifles the team members and then complains that the people aren’t working hard enough.
- Execution: Getting the work done. While I always want people to be happy at work, at the end of the day it is about getting the work done. There are always people in every organization that seem to consistently get things done and always seem to find ways of taking on more. These people are rare, so it is up to the rest of the folks to pick up the slack and generally work hard to keep up. Imagine how much more productive we would be if every person found a way to execute just 10% more. I hope this little conversation has been helpful. If you want to take it a little bit further, try these exercises and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
First, at the end of the day rate yourself with a school letter grade (A, B, C, D) on how well YOU performed against this Human OEE metric. Do this for a week. You might surprise yourself a bit. Next, do the same thing for your team. As you go through the week, rate your people on the same scale and same measurement items. If you have a large team, or you are spread out geographically, it may take more than a week, but the important thing is to keep working on turning the human “gray” areas into quantifiable metrics and measures. Good luck!
