Improving Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) for Battery Factory Output and Profit Margin Increase

The client operates in the battery industry, which is characterized by a huge capacity ramp-up due to increasing demand for electric vehicles. In its automotive battery factories, the client was struggling with comparatively low OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency), requiring measures for improvement. The focus was on identifying and resolving bottleneck processes to increase production output.

We applied a dedicated 4-phase approach combining operational excellence with data science and IoT (Internet of Things) know-how to address the client's challenge:

• Phase 1 "Discover": Performance and machine data analysis for identifying root causes of breakdowns.
• Phase 2 "Define": Definition and testing of hypotheses for solutioning and prioritization.
• Phase 3 "Develop": Solution detailing and prototyping.
• Phase 4 "Deliver": Testing, implementation, and scaling up of solutions.

Together with our client, we achieved significant and sustainable results. We improved OEE by more than 10%, thereby enabling a 1.5 times increase in revenue and output. Overall, we were able to reduce production costs by 10%. The main value drivers for these results were

1. outstanding performance in changeover (material and lot),
2. total productive maintenance (autonomous and planned), and
3. smart technology for intelligent asset utilization.

With our systematic OEE improvement approach, we can save up to 10-20 percentage points in our clients' battery manufacturing processes.