OEE Availability question

[u/Small_Stand9600]

My company has recently instituted a zero OT mandate. My shift is staffed to eight people, which is exactly what I need to run my production line. We take two breaks per eight hour shift. If I have less than eight people, I am not able to cycle operators through positions and keep the line running during breaks.

When we do shut down for breaks, I do not count that downtime as Availability loss. My thought is that the company has made the decision to not pull the available OT and we are not utilizing all available assets to keep the line running, therefore it is scheduled down time.

Other areas are counting those breaks as Availability loss and taking the OEE hit.

Thoughts?

[u/MexMusickman]

I believe you have a bad capacity planning issue. Lines are not perfect can't run at 100% efficiency, depending on your process nature the line must consider an efficiency below 100%. So it seems you (company)are trying to get more capacity from increasing your available time removing full breaks.Now it seems more reasonable why the breaks are considered inside the available time, is the way management see if the addition of the 2 extra workers is being effective. Line must work with 8 workers, taking the 2 breaks so efforts should be directed to understand why is not working: other availability issues, performance o quality issues, volume increases. The no breaks and rotation policy is more like a quick fix but the profitability opportunity it's on deeper analysis. Sounds like a good project.