Unscheduled Time - Understanding your Unscheduled Production metrics

Owned by Steven Arrol (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 09, 2020
3 min read

This article assumes that you are an advanced user and have a high proficiency in both data analysis and manufacturing metrics.

A refresher on Scheduled vs. Unscheduled

Almost all production occurs in “Scheduled Time” – the time during a shift.

OEE and its components (Availability, Performance, Quality) are all based on scheduled time, whereas OEE Capacity (OEEc) treats unscheduled time as a relevant factor to OEE. In your circumstance this may yield useful insights.

 

 

 

How to calculate OEEc

To use capacity fields in Shoplogix Analytics find the “C” suffixed fields.

 

There is of course “OeeC”…

 

…but you’ll also find other fields with the “C” suffix

Any time you come across a “C-suffix” field in the analytics portal, these all relate to this same concept of unscheduled time (capacity).

How to better understand your formulas

These OEE and OEEc formulas are filtered formulas.

This means you can right click → Use Flattened Form to show more details.

 

It’s important to understand that “Is Scheduled” is toggled ON (“true”) in this formula for OEE.

This means we highly do not recommend you manually use the “Is Scheduled” field yourself. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you, and if you use any additional “Is Scheduled” filters in your dashboards, you will likely yield incorrect data.

Filtering can strongly impact OEE and should be carefully applied. Filters like Machine and Plant can be useful.

Carefully apply filters, like State Type, because OEE will remove those components from the calculation and provide non-standard OEE results.

So what is Unscheduled Time, and why is it sometimes useful to analyze?

Production during unscheduled time is usually unexpected or unwanted when determining efficiency. Some reasons production can occur in unscheduled time include:

  • Maintenance - testing machine production.

  • Unexpected overtime - working continuing past a shift.

  • Automatic thresholds, if configured (“2 hours of no production”) can put a shift into unscheduled.

  • Special cases around line production.

  • Some sources of problematic Unscheduled Production are:

    • Bad shift schedule (configuration issue)

    • Excessive use of downtime reasons with “Capacity” type.

To identify if you have problems with this, try using the UnscheduledTime dashboard below. Import it to your analytics as a starting point for your analysis.

Unscheduled Time Dashboard:

 

Additional Shoplogix Resource: OEE and OEEc overview: