Arno Koch •    A machine that is not running is not ‘available’, thus it is suffering an availability loss. However the question may be: when is a machine not running? If it has a 1 second hick-up, did it stop? The ‘minor stops’ concept solves this dilemma.

Stop, Small Stops or Minor Stops?

By definition, many OEE registrations have a threshold somewhere between 1 and 10 minutes, to detect a machine stop. This means: when the machine stops longer than the threshold value (usually 5 minutes) the stop is considered to be an availability loss and needs to be identified. The operator assigns the stop to e.g. a failure- or a waiting- code. If the stop is shorter than the threshold, it is considered to be a ‘minor stop’. A minor stop will not be identified with a stop-code.

Stops: Individually identified or not

This means minor stops do not pop up as individually identified stops. They are not seen as availability losses, but they show as a speed-loss. This makes sense, because if we ask the operator to tell us the reason for each machine stop, even the very small ones, the registration-stress will become unbearable.