Special Considerations

A distinction exists between machine stops and production stops when collecting and reporting downtime information. See Machine Stops vs. Production Stops.

Production Stops occur when no production order is running on a line or when line-level events take place, such as changeovers. Machine Stops occur when an individual machine stops operating during production.

For reporting and KPI calculations, Production Stops take precedence over Machine Stops.

Examples of production stops include:

• Changeover between products
• Setup activities
• Ramp-up after startup
• Tear-down/cleanup
• Waiting between jobs

Examples of machine stops include:

• Jam
• Sensor fault
• Motor failure
• Material starvation
• Blocked conveyor

Machine stops are collected automatically from equipment or control systems, while production stops are triggered by operators. For example, a conveyor jam can be detected by a sensor and communicated to MES through OPC, whereas a changeover can be initiated by a line operator, using an MES dashboard.

In both scenarios, the downtime event is assigned a stop reason. Stop reason configuration determines how downtime is categorized and reported. Configuration includes:

• Classification as a machine stop or production stop
• Impact on the availability component of OEE calculations
• Additional stop-specific attributes, such as stop class and stop type
• Other settings used for downtime analysis and reporting

Short stops are downtime events whose duration fall below a configurable threshold. The threshold is defined individually for each machine.

By default, short stops are not displayed on operator dashboards, however, included in the downtime history report. The Include Stops Under Machine Threshold field on the More tab can be used to include, exclude, or display only short-stop events in the report results.