Mastering OEE in CPG Manufacturing: A Guide for High-Speed Operations

The Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry is a game of pennies, played at incredibly high speed. Your profitability is determined by your ability to maximize throughput and shave fractions of a cent off your cost per unit.

Mike, a Line Manager, is looking at his end-of-shift report. His main bottling line ran for the whole shift with no major breakdowns, but it still missed its production target by a staggering 12%.

He's losing thousands of units of capacity somewhere in the process, but he can't see where.

The Diagnosis (The OEE Data)

Your OEE system provides the clear diagnosis. "Planned Stops" are the biggest source of your Availability loss, and it's all due to the high frequency of product changeovers.

You're switching between different product sizes, formulas, and packaging formats, and every minute spent on a changeover is a minute of lost production.

The Integrated Cure (The CMMS Workflow)

The key is to treat every changeover like a pit stop in a Formula 1 race—a planned, standardized, and highly optimized procedure.

This is the Fabrico workflow. Each changeover is managed as a planned work order in the integrated CMMS.

This work order contains a mandatory digital checklist that guides the operator through every step of the process, from line clearance to final parameter settings.

This ensures the procedure is repeatable and consistently fast, turning your biggest source of downtime into a source of competitive advantage.

The Diagnosis (The OEE Data)

This is the answer to Mike's mystery of the 12% lost production. The OEE Performance metric reveals the "hidden factory."

It exposes the thousands of short, 5- to 10-second "micro-stops" on a high-speed filler or labeler that are never logged manually. A jam, a misaligned bottle, a sensor trip, individually, they seem like nothing, but collectively, they are a massive capacity killer.

The Integrated Cure (The Proactive Maintenance Trigger)

The Fabrico workflow turns this diagnosis into a solution. The OEE system's real-time monitoring detects a recurring pattern of micro-stops on a specific labeler (the diagnosis).

This is a maintenance trigger. Mike can now create a targeted maintenance inspection work order in the CMMS to have a technician investigate and fix the root cause (the cure).

This could be a worn guide rail or a faulty sensor, and fixing it before it causes a major breakdown is the key to proactive control.

The Diagnosis (The OEE Data)

How do you get accurate, real-time data from a complex, end-of-line packaging line with multiple components working in sequence?

The Integrated Cure (The Fabrico Technology)

A true solution needs to be flexible enough to connect to everything.

Fabrico can connect directly to the PLCs of your modern fillers, cappers, and labelers for precise, automated data.

For more complex or older equipment like case packers and palletizers, we can use non-intrusive Computer Vision to automatically count cases and detect stops. This provides a single, unified, and accurate OEE score for your entire line.

How does OEE help with line balancing in CPG?

By providing a clear OEE score (including Availability, Performance, and Quality) for each machine in a line, you can instantly identify your true bottleneck. This data-driven approach allows you to focus your improvement efforts where they will have the biggest impact on the entire line's throughput.

Can OEE track performance for different SKUs on the same line?

Yes. A modern OEE system can be configured to track performance against the specific ideal cycle time for each individual SKU. This allows you to have a true, apples-to-apples performance comparison across all the products you run.

How do you calculate OEE on a continuous process line?

For continuous processes (like in food or chemical CPG), the formula is adapted slightly. Instead of "Total Count," Performance and Quality are often measured by flow rate or volume, but the core principles of maximizing uptime, throughput, and yield remain the same.

In the fast-paced CPG industry, you need a system that is as fast as your production lines.

An integrated OEE and CMMS platform gives you the real-time diagnosis and the instant, systematic cure you need to protect your margins and maximize your throughput.

Ready to see how an integrated OEE and CMMS platform is purpose-built for the speed of CPG manufacturing?

Book a personalized demo of Fabrico today.