CNC Precision Machining
Pune, Maharashtra
The Challenge
OEE was tracked manually — weekly — by a production manager working from supervisors' verbal reports. Machine stops were logged in a paper register, inconsistently and often after the fact. The factory had no line-level visibility into how much time was lost to micro-stops.
The plant ran 12 CNC machines across three shifts. At shift end, each supervisor compiled a handwritten log of breakdowns. Micro-stops — two to eight minutes of idle time — were not recorded because no one had a way to capture them. These small losses, multiplied across machines and shifts, were consuming nearly 2.5 hours of production every day. Nobody knew. Because OEE was calculated manually and only weekly, there was no context to challenge the number. "Around 62% seemed reasonable," the production manager noted. It wasn't.
What Changed
All 12 CNC machines became visible in real time. Every stop — planned or unplanned — was automatically detected, timestamped, and categorised. Shift-level OEE was calculated without any manual effort. Supervisors received alerts within minutes of a machine going down.
Paper logbooks were replaced with digital shift records from Day 1. Within the first week, the team could see — for the first time — exactly when each machine ran, stopped, and why. The morning production review, which previously relied on memory and summaries, became a data-led discussion. Micro-stop patterns became visible within days, enabling targeted fixes within the first month.
Results
of previously invisible production time
replaced with digital records
“The OEE gap between 61% and 74% wasn't found in a management review. It was hiding in the first 48 hours of live data. Losses that had been invisible for years became visible immediately — not because anything changed on the shopfloor, but because for the first time, it was possible to see what was actually happening.”