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OEE Monitor Product Guide

A guide to what you’ll see, why it matters, and how the numbers are calculated in the OEE Monitor.

Jacob Mieso avatar
Written by Jacob Mieso
Updated over 3 weeks ago

About the OEE Monitor

The OEE Monitor is your real‑time command center for production performance. By combining live machine data with your plant’s shift schedules and production entries, it turns complex information into clear, actionable insights that help your team:

  • Stay on target — Instantly see whether OEE, Availability, Performance, and Quality are meeting your goals.

  • Focus on what matters most — Color coding and highlight text draw your attention to the metric furthest from target so you can act quickly.

  • Find and fix issues fast — One click takes you from high‑level metrics to detailed causes of downtime, slow cycles, or quality losses.

  • Track trends in context — Hour‑by‑hour breakdowns make it easy to spot emerging problems and see the cumulative impact of short stops, slowdowns, and scrap.

All in one simple, visual view that’s built on two core Guidewheel concepts:

  • Production Entries — Define what data is included in OEE calculations.

  • Plant Shift Schedules — Set the time range and time zone for the hourly view.

With this foundation, the OEE Monitor helps you win the hour, win the shift, and win the day by making performance visible, measurable, and actionable for everyone on the team.

Tip: The OEE Monitor always displays the current shift in this release. You’ll need both a Plant and Shift Schedule set up in order to use it.

Production Entries in the OEE Monitor

Production Entries tell the OEE Monitor what time and data to include in your calculations. Without them, the system doesn’t know when and what the machine was scheduled to produce, so metrics like OEE, Availability, Performance, and Quality can’t be accurately calculated.

How they work:

  • Only time covered by a Production Entry is included in analysis.

  • Any time without a Production Entry is considered N/A and excluded.

  • If multiple Production Entries overlap, the OEE Monitor will select one to display.

  • If an hour block is split between two entries (e.g., one batch from 6:00–8:30 a.m. and another from 8:30 a.m.–9:00 a.m.), the metrics for that hour block are calculated as a weighted average of both entries.

The OEE, Availability, Performance, and Quality values shown in the Monitor reflect the average across all production entries in the time period.

  • If there’s a changeover or batch change mid‑shift, the metrics are averaged across those entries.

  • This ensures the shift view reflects total performance, not just a single run.

Tip: Accurate and timely Production Entries are key to making sure the OEE Monitor tells the real story of your shift.

Hourly-Level Reporting

Breaking the shift into hourly blocks makes it easier to spot trends, pinpoint issues, and understand the real drivers of performance — without waiting until the end of the shift or production run. This reflects how many manufacturers track and review operational metrics on the shop floor.

How it works:

  • Each block shows OEE, Availability, Performance, and Quality for that hour.

  • Hourly data rolls up into the average values shown for the shift.

Tip: Hover over red or yellow hour blocks to see whether Availability, Performance, or Quality caused the dip in OEE.

Targets and color thresholds

Targets define what “good” looks like, and color thresholds make it instantly clear when you’re on track, at risk, or off target. This keeps the team aligned and focused on the right priorities.

How it works:

The OEE Monitor compares your machine data to targets for:

  • OEE

  • Availability

  • Performance

  • Quality

Color coding is applied based on your thresholds:

  • Green — On target

  • Yellow — At risk (below target by less than your risk tolerance threshold)

  • Red — Off target (below target by more than your risk tolerance threshold)

Where to Set Targets:

Account-level Settings: Settings ▸ Production Settings▸ OEE ▸ Targets

Here you set:

  • An overall OEE target for your account

  • Component targets for Availability, Performance, and Quality

  • Color thresholds for “at risk” (yellow) vs. “off target” (red)

Tip: Set your risk tolerance to 0% if you only want Green/Red with no Yellow.

Cascading logic

Device target → overrides Plant target

Plant target → overrides Account target

Account target → acts as the fallback for all devices

When you change a target at any level, the update flows automatically to the OEE Monitor.

In the future, these same settings will also control color coding for the Scoreboard, Cycles, Production pages, and email widgets — so your performance standards are consistent everywhere.

Custom metric labels

Every manufacturer has its own language for KPIs. Custom labels let you make the OEE Monitor speak your team’s language, improving clarity and adoption.

How it works:

You can rename the Availability, Performance, and Quality metrics in the OEE Monitor to match the terms your team uses.

  • Click the pencil icon next to the metric in OEE Settings.

  • Enter your preferred label (e.g., change “Quality” to “First Pass Yield” or “FPY”).

  • The new label will appear everywhere in the OEE Monitor.

Tip: Use labels your team already knows and uses. This helps everyone quickly understand the data and act on it without translation.

Attributing scrap to hour blocks

How you assign scrap to hours affects when Quality dips appear in the OEE Monitor — and how quickly your team can respond to them.

How it works:

  • You can choose how scrap logged through Guidewheel is distributed in hourly Quality and OEE calculations.

  • Go to:

    • Settings ▸ Production Settings ▸ OEE ▸ Scrap allocation preference

Options:

  1. Evenly

    • Scrap is spread evenly across all hours of the run.

    • Best for scrap logged at the end of a run or intermittently during the run.

    • Prevents one hour from looking disproportionately bad when scrap is entered in a single batch.

  2. Hour Recorded

    • Scrap is assigned to the exact hour it was logged.

    • Best for live scrap logging, so you can pinpoint precisely when quality issues occur.

Tip: Choose “Hour Recorded” if you want to quickly spot process issues in real time, and “Evenly” if you want to smooth out scrap reporting for runs with end‑of‑shift logging.

Secondary and drilldown data on the OEE Component Tiles

Each OEE component metric displays useful secondary data when available.

Availability Secondary Data

Availability shows how much of your scheduled time a machine is actually running. The secondary data adds context by showing unplanned downtime minutes for the current shift.

Definition of Unplanned Downtime

This comes from your account’s Availability metric formula in OEE Settings.

How Availability is Calculated

Numerator Options

  1. Uptime – Minutes at or above the offline threshold (includes true running time + idle time). Choose if idle minutes should help your score (common in maintenance- or uptime‑focused programs).

  2. Run‑time – Minutes at or above the idle threshold (excludes idle time). Choose if idle minutes should hurt your score to highlight lost production time.

Denominator Options

  1. Exclude Planned Downtime – Removes scheduled stops (changeovers, PM, breaks) from the target. Most plants prefer this for day‑to‑day execution so teams aren’t penalized for planned stops.

  2. Include Planned Downtime – Keeps the full shift length in the target, planned stops included. Use when you want every minute of the shift—planned or not—to count toward the score.

Tip: Choose settings that match your improvement priorities — e.g., “Run‑time” + “Exclude Planned Downtime” if you want to spotlight only unplanned losses in scheduled production time.

Availability Drilldown Data

The drill‑down shows the top three causes of unplanned downtime for the selected time period, so you can quickly see what’s hurting Availability the most.

How it works:

  • Clicking the Availability tile opens a Pareto chart of downtime causes.

  • Data comes from Issue tags and machine state, using the same unplanned downtime definition as the tile’s secondary data.

  • Unidentified downtime — Time when the machine was “down” but no tag was applied.

  • Tagged downtime — Rolls up under the assigned tag category.

Important notes:

  • If multiple tags are applied to an issue or issues overlap, total minutes in the Pareto may be greater than the unplanned downtime minutes shown in the tile.

  • The Pareto may also calculate faster than the secondary data, which can cause a few minutes’ difference when a machine is actively down.

Tip: Use the Pareto to focus improvement efforts on the biggest downtime drivers first.

Performance Secondary Data

Performance answers the question:

“How fast is this machine running compared to the speed it should be running?”

The secondary data shown for Performance depends on whether the device is using Cycles, Production Rate, or Standard Speed to calculate performance.

Note: How the system chooses which metric to use will be covered in a future guide.

Cycle‑Based Devices

When cycle times are used to evaluate performance:

  • Shows average cycle time vs. the cycle time standard.

  • Standard comes from either device settings or product settings.

  • Always reflects the current or most recent production entry, even though the performance % in the tile is averaged across all entries in the period.

  • Keeps the number relevant to what’s happening right now.

Production Rate Sensor

  • Shows average production rate (e.g., bottles/hour) vs. the standard production rate.

Standard Speed

  • Shows total estimated units produced so far in the current or most recent run.

  • Performance will typically read 100% in this mode, since throughput is based on the standard speed setting.

Performance Drill Down Data

The drill‑down pinpoints when performance was furthest from target, so you can focus troubleshooting where it will have the biggest impact.

Quality Secondary Data

Quality shows the percentage of units that met your standards. The secondary data adds context by showing scrap quantity for the selected time period.

How it works

  • Reflects all production entries in the selected time range (not just the current or most recent entry).

  • Displays the total scrap quantity alongside total units produced.

    • Example: 120 scrap

  • Scrap can come from:

    • Manual entry in a Production Entry or via Sidekick

    • Integrated data sources

Note: Estimated waste is not currently included in scrap or Quality calculations.

Special handling — future scrap entries

If scrap is logged with a future timestamp, only the portion assigned to elapsed time so far is included in real‑time Quality calculations. This prevents future scrap from artificially lowering your score.

Quality — Drill‑Down View

The drill‑down highlights the top three scrap events for the selected time period, helping you zero in on the biggest quality losses.

How it works

  • Clicking the Quality tile opens a list of the top three scrap events, based on the time each scrap entry was logged in the system.

  • Scrap logs can include entries with future timestamps, which means:

    • The scrap log totals may not exactly match the secondary data.

    • This mismatch occurs because the secondary data only includes scrap assigned to elapsed time so far.

Drill Downs and Filters

Drill‑downs and filters help you move from a high‑level OEE view to details regarding specific production runs and issues that need attention — so you can act quickly and effectively.

Drill‑downs

  • Device name click‑through: Hover over a device name and click to open the Production Page, automatically filtered to the most recent or in‑progress production entry for that device.

Filters

By default, the OEE Monitor:

  • Excludes devices that are Not Scheduled or have no valid OEE data for the time period.

You can adjust filters to:

  • Show all devices in the Plant List — including Not Scheduled devices.

  • Manage by exception — exclude devices that are On Target so you only see those At Risk or Off Target.

Tip: Use “Manage by exception” mode during the shift to focus operator and supervisor time where it will have the biggest impact.

Wrapping Up

The OEE Monitor turns real‑time production data into clear, actionable insights — helping your team stay focused, solve problems faster, and continuously improve. By using it to:

  • Track whether you’re on target for OEE, Availability, Performance, and Quality

  • Identify and address your biggest losses in the moment

  • Learn from hourly trends and root causes

you give every shift the tools to win the hour, win the shift, and win the day.

Next Steps

  • Check your settings — Make sure your Shift Schedules, Production Entries, and OEE targets reflect your current goals and operating rhythm.

  • Coach your team — Use drill‑downs during shift huddles to discuss what’s driving performance.

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