OEE Toolkit for Windows

Machinery is expensive to purchase, operate, and maintain, so operators need to maximize their equipment's output as well as reduce its associated costs. FullFact's OEE Toolkit offers measurable improvements in productivity. It's based on Overall Equipment Effectiveness, an operating efficiency metric for machinery and similar processes that's common in lean manufacturing environments. OEE Toolkit collects a range of data and applies analyses that reveal hidden costs and capacity.

OEE Toolkit is an extensive software package that comes with considerable documentation, including PDF-based manuals, and links to online resources like the OEE Industry Standard site. Its database resources use the Borland Database Engine (BDE), which requires certain steps depending on how you install the program, and some users may need to run the included BDE Server tool. We opted for the Local configuration, where one machine hosts the software, BDE, and database, though we installed the program and the database on separate disks. Various network and hybrid configurations are possible, too. OEE Toolkit's main interface serves as a central control for its various features, which share a family resemblance: colorful, efficient, and packed with data. OEE Toolkit really does too much to summarize briefly, with tools to analyze availability, quality, performance, labor, utilization, and more, and various OEE reporting metrics like andons, trends, and years. The Masterdata file menu includes machinery, teams, shift types, and metrics, and the Graphs menu sets display and reporting options. A wizard simplifies exporting and importing data to various databases. Many of this program's functions are highly specific to its mission, but nothing we tried was too difficult or confusing, though we frequently took advantage of the manual's extensive help. We didn't test a network configuration, but the setup seemed straightforward and unlikely to challenge most admins.

This is a powerful set of productivity tools with a specific focus: getting the most out of your company's investment in machinery and plant. With a wide range of options for collecting, analyzing, displaying, and reporting specialized, specified data, it seems more than up to the job.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of OEE Toolkit 5.4.10. The trial version is limited to 30 days.