TPM, SMED & OEE Improvement
Improve Equipment Reliability, Reduce Changeover Losses and Increase Productive Capacity
Knowledge Kraft helps manufacturers understand and reduce the equipment-related losses that limit production output, quality and delivery performance.
Our consulting combines Total Productive Maintenance, structured changeover improvement and Overall Equipment Effectiveness analysis to create a practical programme for more reliable and productive manufacturing operations.
TPM, SMED & OEE Improvement at a Glance
Service objective: To improve equipment availability, operating performance, product quality and changeover efficiency through structured loss elimination and maintenance practices.
Suitable For
- Plants experiencing frequent breakdowns
- Equipment with low or inconsistent OEE
- Processes with long product changeovers
- Organizations dependent on reactive maintenance
- Production lines with repeated minor stoppages
- Manufacturers experiencing speed losses
- Plants with high start-up rejection
- Businesses seeking additional capacity from existing equipment
- Organizations introducing autonomous maintenance
Knowledge Kraft Can Support
- Equipment-loss assessments
- OEE measurement and improvement
- Downtime categorization
- Breakdown analysis
- Autonomous-maintenance development
- Planned-maintenance review
- Basic equipment-condition restoration
- SMED studies
- Changeover observation and analysis
- Internal and external activity separation
- Start-up loss reduction
- Daily equipment-performance management
- Maintenance and operator training
- Improvement tracking and verification
What Are TPM, SMED and OEE?
Total Productive Maintenance
Total Productive Maintenance is a company-wide approach to improving equipment and production-system effectiveness by preventing breakdowns, defects, unsafe conditions and other operating losses.
TPM involves more than the maintenance department. It requires participation from production, engineering, quality, maintenance and management teams to maintain equipment conditions, prevent deterioration and improve performance.
Single-Minute Exchange of Die
SMED is a structured approach to reducing equipment setup and changeover time.
A central SMED principle is to distinguish between internal activities, which can only be performed when equipment is stopped, and external activities, which can be performed while the equipment continues operating.
The improvement process seeks to move suitable work from internal to external setup and simplify the remaining activities. The term single minute refers to the aim of completing changeovers in a single-digit number of minutes where technically feasible.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness
OEE is an indicator used to understand how effectively equipment is being used.
Availability: Time lost through breakdowns, setup and stoppages
Performance: Losses caused by reduced speed and minor stops
Quality: Losses caused by defects, rework and start-up rejection
OEE is calculated by multiplying availability, performance and quality. The value is most useful when its underlying losses are accurately categorized and acted upon.
Challenges We Help Customers Address
- Equipment breakdowns repeatedly interrupt production
- Maintenance activities are mainly reactive
- Operators and maintenance personnel have unclear responsibilities
- OEE data is inaccurate or inconsistently calculated
- Downtime reasons are poorly defined
- Minor stoppages are not recorded
- Equipment runs below intended speed
- Changeovers contain excessive waiting and searching
- Tools and materials are prepared after the machine stops
- Adjustments continue for long periods after changeover
- Start-up rejection reduces available production time
- Preventive-maintenance plans are not based on equipment risk
- Equipment conditions deteriorate because basic care is inconsistent
- Maintenance actions are completed without effectiveness review
- OEE reporting focuses on the percentage rather than the causes of loss
What Knowledge Kraft Delivers
Knowledge Kraft works with relevant management, engineering, production, quality, maintenance and support teams to develop practical improvements suited to the organization’s operating conditions.
- Defining equipment and production-performance requirements
- Reviewing existing maintenance practices
- Establishing suitable OEE calculation rules
- Validating production and downtime data
- Categorizing availability, performance and quality losses
- Developing equipment-loss Pareto analyses
- Facilitating breakdown root-cause analysis
- Reviewing preventive and predictive maintenance activities
- Establishing autonomous-maintenance tasks
- Developing cleaning, inspection and lubrication standards
- Improving abnormality identification and escalation
- Recording complete changeover activities
- Separating internal and external setup work
- Improving preparation, tools, fixtures and material availability
- Reducing adjustment and start-up losses
- Developing standard changeover procedures
- Establishing equipment-performance boards
- Training operators, supervisors and maintenance personnel
- Monitoring improvement results
- Supporting the rollout to additional machines
Frequently Asked Questions
There is no universal target suitable for every process. Targets should consider equipment design, product mix, process risk, current performance and customer requirements.
Yes. Poor definitions, excluded downtime or inaccurate ideal-cycle times can produce misleading OEE values. The reliability of the underlying data is essential.
No. Maintenance provides technical expertise, but production, engineering, quality and management also have important responsibilities.
Not necessarily. Operators normally perform defined basic care, inspection and abnormality reporting. Specialized repairs remain with competent maintenance personnel.
Yes. The method remains useful even when technical conditions prevent a single-digit changeover. The purpose is to systematically reduce setup time and variation.
The agreed definition should be clear. It may be measured from the final good part of one production run to the first approved good part of the next run.
Yes. Reducing breakdowns, speed losses, defects and setup time may increase available capacity without immediately purchasing additional equipment.
The duration depends on the complexity of the setup, equipment, tooling, number of observations and required modifications.
Yes. The engagement can begin with a pilot machine or bottleneck process before being expanded.
No. Software may support data collection and analysis, but clear loss definitions, employee participation and effective action remain more important.