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Improving the productivity of a manufacturing firm is very imperative in order to obtain high profits in such a competitive market. Equipment is an important part of a manufacturing system and its efficiency directly affects the quality and cost of the product contributing to overall productivity of a manufacturing plant. This paper focuses on calculating the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) at a local pharmaceutical industry and investigates the key factors which influence the overall equipment effectiveness. OEE is an important tool which identifies areas that may have bottleneck in the production line, covering three major aspects such as the availability, performance, and quality rate of the output of equipment. On the basis of OEE, six significant losses were identified. The preliminary results of the analysis showed that OEE for the dry suspension (D/S) section is only 23% which is substantially below the benchmark of OEE level i.e. 85%. The results also presented that prime cause involves a high difference between the performance level of world class and dry suspension (D/S) process which is due to unavailability of machines for a longer period of time and malfunctioned machines producing products in large quantities that need to be

In recent times, the globalization of markets due to the improvement of utilization of resources has significant impact on the manufacturing systems. International competition forced companies to establish efficient and effective production facilities that provide best possible outcome in terms of profitability, throughput and lead time. In this background, every industrial facility is in competition to remain competitive in the market and be flexible for future changes. It is not easy to change the environment of any facility in order to check the results beforehand therefore simulation is a viable option. Simulation tools are used to help analyze performance measures for improvement. This paper presents a case by analyzing a facility in order to improve its production using simulation tool. In this study, simulation model for the production facility of Fort Ceramic Company is developed from its current state and then changes are made to its inter-arrival time. Models for both improved and current systems are developed in the simulation tool. Data analyzed in the simulation tool shows better results that represent a significant improvement in productivity, cycle time and throughput time to optimize the system.It is also observed that by decreasing the inter arrival time there is increase in the throughput which improves the revenue.