Planned/Unplanned Downtime

Feature: Planned/Unplanned Downtime

Release Date: March 24th, 2021

How to Turn it On: Contact your CSM

Utilization is a great metric to use to understand your factory's capacity, but that number can get a little complicated when you start using it to judge your factory's overall performance. When you're setting goals for your operators, you'll realize that some days, 50% utilization is actually good—and on other days, 50% utilization is bad. The context of whether that utilization number is good or bad, usually stems from variable demand on your machines—and that's not something you want to hold your production team accountable for!

You want to ask the question: "When my machines are scheduled to run, how well are they running?" The key word being scheduled.

Our new features allow you to normalize data with:

• Dynamic Scheduling: Indicate whether a machine is scheduled to run a certain day or shift. • Mass Downtime Labeling: Mass label downtime for an entire day. For example, if there was a company holiday or a scheduled plant shutdown. • Remove Select Downtime Reasons: Remove Break/Lunch or other downtime reason codes like Setup, from your overall available production time. • Set Utilization Targets: Establish utilization goals regardless of your variable production time. For example, you can set 80% as a utilization goal that means, when you are scheduled to run, you want to run at 80%. Our software can now take out any planned downtime from the utilization equation.

How to Use Planned/Unplanned Downtime

There are 2 new places in the app for you to input this data.

In Settings
In the new Downtime Console

First, determine what is Planned downtime for your plant. Go through your downtime codes (in settings) and tag them accordingly. The most common reason codes are No Work, Unscheduled, Setup, and Break/Lunch

Now, any time your operators label a downtime event with a Planned downtime codes, it will be removed from your utilization equation. This essentially says that the machine wasn't available during this period of time.

Then go to the Downtime Console:

Check out the video below on how to use the Downtime Console to mass label downtime reasons. It's recommended that you have 1 person go through the mass labeling workflow every day to indicate whether or not something was scheduled to run the previous day.

Watch 4-minute video 👇

👉

If you choose to use this new feature, your utilization numbers will only show your Performance Utilization (see definitions below). Machine Timelines, Scoreboards, the Operator Interface and the Explorer tools will reflect this Performance Utilization number, once you opt-into it. Please Note: Historic Explorer data will not be updated. The Machines page and Scoreboards will indicate periods of Planned downtime with a stripe. This will to help provide visual aid if utilization numbers seem off or unusual. See the screenshot below.

Other Important Information

For now, you will not be able to toggle between Capacity Utilization and Performance Utilization. It will be just one number.
Turning this feature on will not update your historical data. However, once downtime reasons are flagged as Planned, time labelled with those reasons will change utilization numbers. For example, if you created a reason called Holiday and marked it as Planned, and then labeled a day from two months ago as Holiday, it would change the utilization numbers for that day. But note: if you already had a reason called Holiday and simply changed it to be labeled as Planned, historical data would stay intact. It's the act of labeling that affects historical information.
In the Explorer Tool, there will be a brief delay between labeling downtime as Planned and those changes appearing in your utilization numbers—typically less than 5 minutes.
Once you turn this feature on, it will likely increase your utilization numbers. Make sure you note the day you decided to turn this feature on and let your CSM know if they need to change your utilization goals in the system

Important Definitions

Capacity Utilization: Your overall utilization metric—inclusive of factors you can AND cannot control. This utilization number will be affected by factors like: no shift running that day, if employees go on break, or there's no job to run. As a rule of thumb, this number is impacted by everything; all reasons for downtime are included in this number.

Performance Utilization: Your overall utilization metric exclusive of factors you can't control. This utilization number excludes any reason codes you mark as Planned..

Unplanned Downtime: Time when a machine should be running but isn't. This impacts your Performance Utilization.

Planned Downtime: Time when a machine isn't running, but there is a reason for it. This does not impact your Performance Utilization.