OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) | Manufacturing KPI Guide
OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is the gold-standard manufacturing KPI for measuring how effectively a machine or production line is used during planned production time. It multiplies three factors: Availability — actual run time versus planned production time, reduced by breakdowns and changeovers; Performance — actual speed versus the ideal cycle time, reduced by minor stops and slow running; and Quality — good units versus total units produced, reduced by scrap and rework. The formula is OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality, expressed as a single percentage. World-class OEE is typically 85% or higher (roughly 90% Availability × 95% Performance × 99.9% Quality), while most manufacturers operate between 60% and 75%, leaving substantial room for improvement.
Anatomy of the Chart
- Planned production time
- The denominator everything is measured against; scheduled run time, breaks excluded.
- Availability
- Run time versus planned time — lost to breakdowns and changeovers.
- Performance
- Actual speed versus ideal cycle time — lost to minor stops and slow running.
- Quality
- Good units versus total units — lost to defects and rework.
- The Six Big Losses
- The standard breakdown that maps each loss to one of the three factors.
How to Create
- 1
Fix the planned production time
Start from the time the line was scheduled to run. Breaks and unscheduled shifts are outside it; breakdowns and changeovers are not — those belong to the losses you are about to measure.
- 2
Availability — run time ÷ planned time
Subtract every stoppage from planned time to get run time, then divide. This is the factor that carries changeover and breakdown losses.
- 3
Performance — ideal time ÷ run time
Multiply total units by the ideal cycle time and divide by run time. Minor stops and slow running show up here and nowhere else.
- 4
Quality — good units ÷ total units
Count only units that passed first time. Reworked units are not good units; counting them hides the loss.
- 5
Multiply the three factors
OEE is the product, not the average. Three factors at 90% each give 73%, which is why a line that looks fine on every individual measure can still lose a quarter of its planned time.
Yamazo Studio is a video-based time study tool, not a real-time OEE monitoring or MES system — it does not read machine signals or display live OEE dashboards. Instead, it pinpoints the root causes behind each OEE loss so you can act on them. Map the Six Big Losses to Yamazo analysis: availability losses (changeover and setup) through SMED breakdowns; performance losses (minor stops, reduced speed, operator wait) through cycle-time and line-balance study; and quality losses (defects, rework) through standard-work deviation analysis. The video evidence turns an abstract OEE number into a prioritized list of concrete improvements.
The quality factor collapses every reject into a single percentage, which hides how rare or common the defect really is — convert the same rejects into defects per million opportunities.
Example
A packaging line measured 62% OEE (95% Availability × 80% Performance × 82% Quality). Video analysis with Yamazo Studio showed that 23% of downtime came from changeovers — addressed with SMED — and 15% from operator wait time caused by poor line balance, addressed through yamazumi-based rebalancing. Standard-work analysis removed a recurring quality defect. After the improvements, Availability, Performance and Quality each rose, lifting overall OEE from 62% to 78% — a 26% relative gain without buying new equipment.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Take the template with you
We will email you the element time study template — station, element, category and five cycle columns, with worked example rows already filled in. The same email carries the Yamazo Studio demo links, in case you want to measure the same thing from video instead.