Most plants don't lose OEE in one big dramatic breakdown. They lose it in a hundred small leaks nobody writes down — a 40-second micro-stop here, a changeover that ran long there, a quality reject blamed on "the material" three days after the fact. Add them up over a quarter and they're worth more than your software budget.
This is the list we walk through on a floor walk. Work through it honestly with your shift supervisors before you spend a rupee on any system. Tick what you already have covered. The blanks are where your OEE is hiding.
A. The downtime you're not logging
Every stop over 60 seconds is logged with a reason code — not just "down."
Micro-stops (5–60 seconds) are counted somewhere. If they're invisible, assume they're 5–10% of your day.
You can answer "which station stopped most last week?" without opening three spreadsheets.
Downtime reasons are tagged when they happen, not reconstructed at end-of-shift from memory.
Night-shift downtime is logged to the same standard as day shift. (It usually isn't.)
B. Changeover and setup
You know your average changeover time per product family — measured, not estimated.
You can see which operators and which products run long changeovers.
The wrong-recipe / wrong-setup error is caught before the run starts, not after 200 scrap units.
Heaters / coolers / aux equipment drop to standby during changeover instead of running idle.
C. Quality and rework
Scrap and rework are tagged with a root cause at the point of detection.
You can tell whether a defect was material, calibration, or operator — without a meeting.
Repeat defects on high-mix changeovers are tracked, so the same mistake doesn't recur silently.
First-pass yield is known per line and per shift, not just as a plant average.
D. SOP adherence
You have a defined "golden sequence" for critical operations — written down, not in someone's head.
You'd know if operators were skipping a step on the night shift. (Spot checks don't count.)
Gowning / PPE / safety-zone compliance is verifiable, not assumed.
E. The data you already have
You have IP cameras on the floor that currently only record for security.
Your machines expose some signal (PLC, counter, even a stack light) you're not capturing.
Production numbers live in one place a supervisor can reach — not five disconnected logs.
F. Before you buy any software
You've picked one line to prove value on before rolling anything out plant-wide.
You've agreed the 3 numbers that would make a pilot a success — in advance, in writing.
How to read your score
15+ ticked: you're disciplined — the gains are in speed and automation, not basic visibility.
8–14 ticked: typical Tier-2 plant. There's a real OEE recovery sitting in the blanks.
Under 8: you're flying half-blind. The first job isn't AI — it's seeing the floor honestly. That's cheap to fix and usually worth several OEE points in the first quarter.