Overall Equipment Effectiveness: Required but not Enough—An Analysis Integrating Overall Equipment Effect and Data Envelopment Analysis

The efficiency levels at which companies turn inputs into outputs may increase their competitive capacity. Nevertheless, in the literature, there is a lack of methods allowing evaluation of the performance of operations in production systems that take into account all of their components. The objective of this study is to present an analysis of efficiency for a production system using DEA and OEE in an integrated manner (DEA/OEE). To achieve this objective, we conducted a case study of a bus manufacturer and a comparative analysis using the results obtained by DEA/OEE compared with the results of the OEE measured in an operation of the company studied. The efficiency measured by DEA/OEE presents differences in relation to OEE results. The analysis of the causes of such differences pointed out that action taken to improve the OEE indicator decreased the efficiency of the operation analyzed. This study evidences that decision-making focused on improving OEE on its own may lead to an increase in the consumption of resources during an operation. Such an increase does not necessarily increase production levels and may reduce technical efficiency.