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OEE World Class Gap Simulator

People ask what a good OEE is, then discover their lines run well below the quoted 85 percent. This simulator turns that gap into units and margin, so you can decide which of availability, performance or quality is worth attacking first.

Your numbers

Current availability

82 %

Operating time over scheduled time.

Current performance

86 %

Ideal cycle time versus actual speed while running.

Current quality

97 %

First pass good units over total units.

Target availability

A commonly quoted benchmark is 90 percent.

Target performance

A commonly quoted benchmark is 95 percent.

Target quality

A commonly quoted benchmark is 99 percent or better.

Scheduled hours per year

hours

Ideal rate

units/hour

Contribution margin per good unit

Selling price less variable cost. Use this only if the extra units can be sold.

Your results

Current OEE

68.4%

Extra good units at target

77,955

Target OEE

84.6%

Gap to target

16.2406

Percentage points of OEE between your current level and the target.

Good units per year now

328,341

Margin value of extra units

$506,707

Upper bound. It assumes demand exists and materials and labor are available.

Equivalent scheduled hours saved

767 hrs

Hours you would not need to schedule to produce today's volume at target OEE, roughly.

Benchmarks such as 85 percent OEE are rules of thumb, not standards. Process type, product mix and how a plant defines planned downtime change what is realistic.

Save results:

OEE as availability improves

Sweeps Current availability from 50 to 100, holding your other inputs fixed.

Check your OEE inputs against ERP data

Optional: we can compare the availability and quality you entered with what your ERP confirmations and scrap postings show.

Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.

How to use the simulator

Set current availability, performance and quality from your last month of data, not your best week. Then set targets. The defaults use 90, 95 and 99 percent, which multiply to roughly 85 percent OEE and are the figures most often quoted as world class. Enter scheduled hours per year, the ideal rate in units per hour and the contribution margin per good unit. The tool shows OEE now, OEE at target, the gap in points and the extra good units a year. Move the sliders one at a time to see which factor moves OEE most per point of effort.

Why 85 percent is a reference, not a rule

The 85 percent figure comes from multiplying 90, 95 and 99 percent. It is a convenient yardstick for high volume discrete lines. A job shop with hundreds of changeovers a week, a process line with long cleaning cycles or a defense electronics cell with serialized builds may reach 60 to 70 percent and still be healthy. What matters is the trend on the same machine with the same definitions. Use the target fields to set a realistic stretch goal for your own process, then compare it to the benchmark as a sanity check rather than a verdict.

Compare a machine with itself over time first.
Use peers in the same process type second.
Treat published benchmarks as a ceiling check, not a goal.

Reading the output

With the defaults, current OEE is about 68 percent against an 85 percent target. That gap is roughly 16 points, worth well over 70,000 extra good units a year on 4,000 scheduled hours at 120 units an hour. The margin line is an upper bound because it assumes the market will buy those units. The equivalent hours line is often more useful: it tells you how much schedule you could free for other work. Use the chart to see how much OEE rises as availability improves while the other factors stay put.

Common mistakes

Teams often set all three targets at once and spread effort thin. Pick the factor with the largest loss in minutes, which a loss breakdown will show, and attack that. Another mistake is raising performance targets above what the machine was designed to do. Finally, avoid multiplying benefits by a full year when changes will be phased in. If your ERP records downtime reason codes and scrap by work center, use those to set current availability and quality from actual confirmations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a world class OEE?

The usual reference is 85 percent, from 90 percent availability, 95 percent performance and 99 percent quality. It is a rule of thumb for repetitive discrete production. Many healthy plants run lower because of product mix, changeovers or regulation.

Which OEE factor should I improve first?

Start with the factor that loses the most minutes. Convert quality loss to minutes by multiplying defects by the ideal cycle time. Fixing the biggest block of lost time usually moves OEE faster than polishing a factor that is already near target.

Are the extra units real revenue?

Only if you can sell them. Extra capacity is worth the margin only when demand exceeds current output. Otherwise the benefit is fewer scheduled hours, less overtime and lower cost per unit, which the equivalent hours output estimates.

Can I use this for a whole plant?

You can, but averages hide bottlenecks. Run it for the constraint machine first. Improving a non-constraint rarely raises plant output, while a point of OEE on the bottleneck is a point of plant throughput.

If you would like current availability, performance and quality drawn from your ERP instead of typed in, Netray can set up a read-only view on your own systems. The simulator itself needs nothing from us.

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