The digital transformation landscape in manufacturing is highly fragmented. Around 65% of manufacturers are still in the early stages, focusing on foundational elements such as automated data collection. Meanwhile, approximately a quarter have adopted generic monitoring tools that provide essential shop floor insights for process improvement. However, these solutions often lack personalization. As highlighted by Deloitte, excessive data without context can overwhelm personnel, creating resistance to change and hindering adoption.
A small yet forward-thinking segment of manufacturers has addressed this challenge by implementing tailored monitoring solutions like custom OEE dashboards. These tailored solutions empower employees with precisely the insights they need—nothing more, nothing less—eliminating unnecessary complexity. This targeted approach enhances decision-making, improves workforce efficiency, and ultimately accelerates the success and ROI of digital transformation initiatives.
In this article, we introduce SCW.AI’s Custom OEE Dashboard, a solution designed to support manufacturers in achieving a streamlined, cost-effective, and insight-driven digital transformation. By providing real-time, role-specific monitoring, our platform helps reduce costs, increase throughput, and enhance product quality—all without adding unnecessary complexity.
An Introduction to SCW.AI’s Custom OEE Dashboard
SCW.AI’s Custom OEE Dashboard is a key component of its OEE Tracker, designed to provide manufacturers with personalized monitoring solutions. With this tool, manufacturers can create multiple tailored monitoring pages that display relevant data for specific production lines and work orders. Unlike generic dashboards, the Custom OEE Dashboard enables manufacturers to filter and present only the most relevant insights, eliminating unnecessary complexity.
Once configured using a user-friendly interface, these dashboards can be shared with specific personnel or teams, ensuring that every stakeholder has access to the insights they need to drive performance improvements.
Tailored Insights for Your Unique Needs
Consider a Custom OEE Dashboard designed for a line leader. Instead of sifting through a flood of irrelevant data, she gains access to a streamlined, role-specific interface displaying only the most crucial insights regarding the line she is responsible for such as:
Actual vs. target production counts for precise performance tracking.
- Breakdown of activity durations, including runtime, unplanned downtime, planned downtime, and idle time.
- Top five tasks consuming non-runtime hours, such as scheduled maintenance.
- Work order completion rates to monitor progress efficiently.
- Real-time line status or similar for immediate decision-making.
By consolidating critical analytics into a single, real-time dashboard, employees can quickly access the information they need without unnecessary navigation or manual data interpretation. This efficiency leads to faster, data-driven decisions and smoother operations.
The Challenge of Standard OEE Dashboards
Traditional OEE dashboards offer comprehensive analytics across an entire manufacturing operation. While this level of detail is valuable for high-level management and strategic planning, it can overwhelm operators and frontline workers who only require specific insights relevant to their tasks.
Since standard dashboards cater to various roles on the shop floor, they often display excessive KPIs across multiple production lines and stations. This information overload can hinder adoption, slowing down digital transformation rather than accelerating it.
A more effective approach is to provide custom dashboards for each role, allowing employees to monitor only the data that matters to them. By eliminating unnecessary complexity and reducing navigation between multiple screens, manufacturers increase user engagement and improve the success rate of digital transformation initiatives.
Understanding the Core Components of a Custom OEE Dashboard
A Custom OEE Dashboard is built on several key components that ensure seamless data flow, relevant insights, and user-friendly visualization. These elements allow manufacturers to track real-time performance, identify inefficiencies, and make data-driven decisions with precision.
Data Sources and Integration
- Seamless connectivity with existing manufacturing systems, including OPC connections, PLCs, MES, SCADA, ERP, and IoT devices. If manufacturers have no existing solution for gathering shop floor data, SCW.AI assists manufacturers with IoT devices.
- Automated data collection from machines, sensors, and shop floor environment to eliminate time consuming and error prone manual gathering.
- Unified data streams from multiple sources, ensuring a single source of truth for production monitoring.
- Custom integration options to adapt to unique manufacturing environments and processes.
Report Selection and Configuration
- Role-based access control, ensuring that different teams receive relevant insights tailored to their responsibilities.
- Predefined and user-defined report templates for quick and efficient data analysis.
- Flexible data filtering to enable deeper analysis of production trends, downtime, and efficiency.
Visualizations and Layout Options
- Customizable dashboard layouts to match the needs of different users, from operators to executives.
- Intuitive data visualization tools, including real-time charts, graphs, and infographics.
- Drill-down capabilities to investigate root causes of inefficiencies and performance variations.
- Mobile-friendly and responsive design for accessibility across devices and workstations including screens that display data in the production area.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Metrics
- Essential OEE components such as Availability, Performance, and Quality metrics.
- Downtime tracking, including equipment breakdowns, changeover times, micro-stops, and speed losses.
- Production performance monitoring, comparing actual vs. target output in real time.
- Work order efficiency, tracking completion rates and adherence to schedules.Quality control indicators, identifying scrap rates and first-pass yield performance.
To learn which manufacturing KPIs to monitor for improved shop floor performance across production, maintenance, planning, and quality teams, download our Manufacturing KPIs Handbook. It contains over 60 KPIs with formulas and definitions.
Top 5 Benefits of Custom OEE Dashboard
1. Enhanced Visibility and Real-Time Monitoring
By transforming complex shop floor data into role-specific insights, the Custom OEE Dashboard eliminates guesswork and ensures real-time visibility into operations. With clear, actionable intelligence, manufacturers can digitize lean activities—a strategy that, according to Bain & Company, doubles the return of traditional lean methodologies.
With improved visibility, manufacturers can:
- Reduce costs by up to 30% through optimized resource allocation.
- Increase throughput by 40% by minimizing inefficiencies.
- Shorten production time by 20% with line balancing proactive decision-making.
2. Improved Problem-Solving
Effective problem-solving consists of three critical steps:
- Issue Identification: Without real-time shop floor visibility, detecting bottlenecks and inefficiencies can be time-consuming or, in some cases, nearly impossible. Custom OEE Dashboards help manufacturers identify issues as they emerge, ensuring faster response times.
- Root Cause Analysis: Once an issue is detected, manufacturers must generate and test hypotheses to determine its root cause. Granular KPI tracking is essential for this step. For example, a high scrap rate could be linked to humidity levels. With integrated environmental data, manufacturers can immediately validate or dismiss this assumption, streamlining the problem-solving process.
- Testing and Validation: Once a hypothesis is developed, the next step is to test potential solutions. Suppose setup errors contribute to high scrap rates—a manufacturer can implement automated pre-checks and worker training to address the issue. The Custom OEE Dashboard tracks scrap rates before and after interventions, providing data-driven validation of corrective actions.
By supporting root cause analysis methods such as Ishikawa Fishbone Diagrams, the Custom OEE Dashboard enables fact-based brainstorming, helping teams implement effective, data-driven solutions.
3. Augmented Operators and Management
According to the World Economic Forum, leveraging digital technologies can increase labor productivity by 50%. By equipping both operators and management with real-time, role-specific data, manufacturers empower their workforce to focus on efficiency and innovation.
In manual, spreadsheet-driven shop floors, workers must collect, input, and analyze data manually—a time-consuming task that diverts focus from actual production improvements.
By automating data collection and analysis, the Custom OEE Dashboard eliminates this inefficiency, allowing workers to:
- Spend more time on value-added tasks instead of manual reporting.
- Make faster, informed decisions with automatically processed insights.
- Reduce human error in data entry and interpretation.
4. Reduced Downtime and Speed Losses
With a Custom OEE Dashboard, manufacturers can:
- Pinpoint unplanned downtime causes—whether due to machine failures, operator errors, or supply chain disruptions.
- Track micro-stops and speed losses, helping to determine whether inefficiencies stem from equipment wear, poor setup, or process variations.
- Analyze changeover times to identify optimization opportunities and minimize production delays.
- Receive real-time alerts on unexpected slowdowns, enabling immediate intervention.
5. Increased Production Quality
A Custom OEE Dashboard ensures world class manufacturing by:
- Tracking defect rates in real time, allowing for immediate corrective action.
- Identifying recurring quality issues, such as variations in material consistency, machine calibration, or operator errors.
- Providing detailed reports on quality deviations, enabling manufacturers to establish proactive quality control measures.
By integrating real-time quality monitoring into daily operations, manufacturers can reduce defect rates, minimize waste, and ensure consistently high production standards.
Streamlined Shop Floor Digital Transformation with SCW.AI
SCW.AI is an innovative end-to-end technology provider for manufacturers worldwide. Through our modular Digital Factory Platform, we empower businesses—particularly in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and food & beverage industries—with the tools they need to achieve efficient, data-driven operations.
Our platform offers a comprehensive suite of solutions, including:
- Monitoring: Gain real-time visibility into shop floor performance.
- Execution: Enhance process efficiency with streamlined action management.
- Compliance: Ensure GMP adherence with built-in compliance tracking.
- Planning: Optimize resource allocation and production scheduling.
- Sustainability: Improve energy efficiency and minimize waste.
Designed to be user-friendly, cost-effective, scalable, and rapidly deployable, SCW.AI solutions help manufacturers accelerate their digital transformation journey without unnecessary complexity.
Want to learn more about the Digital Factory Platform or our Custom OEE Dashboard? Contact us today to explore how we can support your manufacturing goals.
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