Carbon based Overall Energy Effectiveness as a key performance indicator in the production process – An injection molding case

Abstract: A manufacturer would love to see progress in the optimization of a production system to maximize profit while maintaining the environmental regulations enacted by a government or society. Thus, a key performance indicator is needed to indicate how the system production is performing in monetary as well as environmental aspects. However, the manufacturer and the regulating body may not be aware of the environmental impacts associated with the production system as a key performance indicator like Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) only implies the monetary aspects of the process. Therefore, there is a need to quantify the carbon emissions of the process and use it as a parameter that indicates profitability and environmental sustainability at the same time. From the public and policy-making body's point of view, they need a proper scale that can be used to track the compliance of the manufacturers with the environmental regulations. In this study, this carbon-based indicator (COEE) aims to discover a way of monitoring the progress of a process with environmental considerations. This study raises key questions that are constructive to each other to build a comparison of the ordinary OEE and environmental COEE. To do so a case study about the plastic process using an injection molding machine is conducted. The data used in this study was provided by the company named Good Solutions. Based on the data provided, the ordinary OEE of the machine for each shift is used to contrast with the result of the new modeled COEE. The RMSE for the given OEE of the machine was 13.424 while for COEE is 12.695. The RMSE of both OEEs indicates that the COEE can be used as an indicator for economic as well as environmental assessments.