OEE and downtime

Set it up in your plant

Setting up OEE and downtime in your plant. OEE and downtime measures how well each machine turns its planned time into good parts: every shift's stops, by reason and kind of loss, and what it made, with availability, performance, quality and OEE worked out on the shift, and a board that shows where the time goes.

1. Install itIT

   On the plant's OpenCore MES server, in its plant folder: sign in once with a licence token from your account at suites.opencoremes.com, install the suite, then restart OpenCore MES (opencore-mes start, or the service that runs it). Newer versions are said in About; nothing of yours is lost by an update.

   opencore-mes suite login

   opencore-mes suite install oee

2. Try it on a test installation firstIT

   Install it on a test or training installation before production. There, load its sample records (Designer → From the suites → Load its sample records): three machines, eight stop reasons, five days of shifts. Walk a shift at a station and read the OEE board with the supervisors. Samples never go on production.

3. Prepare People & departmentsAdministrator

   The suite's designs give their roles to the groups production (operators log stops and counts; supervisors start and close shifts), engineering (supervisor too: industrial engineers keep the ideal cycles and the reasons) and quality and it (read).

4. Take its designs through a changeDesigner

   Designer → From the suites → Start a change from it. The change holds the measured machine, stop reason, machine shift and stop objects (OEE worked out on the shift by derived fields), the four moves, the shift-left-open plan, the OEE board and the station. Change what differs in your plant (the kinds of loss, the world-class mark, the charts), run the fitness test, submit; Production approves it.

5. Enter your machines and reasonsEngineering

   For each machine you measure, its ideal cycle: the fastest a good part can come off it, in seconds (a nameplate rate in parts per hour is 3600 ÷ that rate). Then your stop reasons, each with its kind of loss, and which are planned (breaks, planned maintenance, no orders): planned stops are taken off the planned time; the others are downtime.

   • Get the ideal cycle right: it decides performance. Use the machine's best demonstrated rate, not the average.
6. Run shifts at the stationsProduction

   Open the OEE station for a machine (scan its id): start its shift with how long it is scheduled, log each stop with its reason and minutes (and a photo where it helps), count good and scrap as you go, and the supervisor closes the shift once everything is in. A shift left open past its day asks the supervisors.

7. Read the boardEngineering

   The OEE board shows OEE and its three factors by machine against the 85 % world-class mark, OEE by day, where the planned time went (downtime, slow running, scrap) and the stops that cost the most. Review it in the daily production meeting: attack the biggest bar first.

8. Connect what you already have (optional)Designer

   Planned time can come from the Shift Calendar suite, and counts and stops from machines through Equipment integration: a service or a transaction step of your own design that fills the shift. Both are changes like any other.

9. Go liveProduction

   Start with one line, check a week of shifts against what the supervisors know, then add the others.

The same guide is in FLAMES once the suite is installed: Designer, From the suites, Set-up guide.