When you use a system or tool to monitor machine downtime, performance, and OEE automatically, the outcome usually depends on how well your system is set up. Defining machine breakdown causes is one of the most critical aspects you need to focus on.

The first thing to think about is the structure of your machine breakdown causes. You want to keep it as simple as possible so that production operators on the shop floor can easily find the right reasons. To get started with this, put together the most frequent breakdown reasons in your production and see how you can group them. For example, if there are three main reasons that cause breakdowns, group them into three main groups, each containing six breakdown causes. This makes it easier for operators on the shop floor to find the right reasons when they have a problem.

Define main stop groups and reasons

The standard practice is to start with three to five groups, and each group should have no more than six breakdown causes. Six is the optimal figure as it helps keep the list short and manageable. However, some users successfully manage up to eight stop reasons per group. This isn’t wrong, it just means more scrolling, more complexity, and more time for your operators to find the right reason.

You Should Avoid Generality in Cause Definitions

When you define machine breakdown causes, it is more useful to avoid general definitions. The reason is very simple – if your causes are general, then so is your downtime analysis. You won’t be able to make informed decisions on what to improve in order to increase OEE and reduce downtime.

Let’s say that operators register a “Mechanical breakdown” as the cause of a problem 30 times per month and forward the issue to maintenance. If you can more specifically define the problem—for example, “Conveyor breakdown” or “Packing machine breakdown”—you can send your maintenance team to resolve the problem more effectively.

Infrequent breakdowns

Occasionally, breakdowns occur that are not in the main stop groups. It is essential to keep track of those as well because they can give you important information about your production.

To help you keep track of potential downtime causes, we recommend creating a breakdown group called “Other” or defining a breakdown cause called “Other” in one of the existing groups. In addition, in Tipteh IoT platform, operators can add extra notes to all breakdown reasons. These notes can often reveal crucial details about your downtime; you should go over these reasons periodically and see if there are any patterns and if you need to add a new breakdown cause to your main list.

In some cases, operators enter reasons on the breakdown sheet such as “Material shortage,” “No material,” and “Missing material.” This means that you should add a new breakdown to your list of reasons that are related to material shortages. Once you do this, be sure to let your employees know so that they can be on the lookout for this type of problem.

Monitoring breakdowns caused by long production lines can be tricky

If you have an automated system in place that monitors breakdowns, you can better react to them. If an operator is stationed at the end of a line and a breakdown occurs at the beginning of the line, you can easily record it and see how long the downtime was for each machine and location. This is crucial information for inventory management and optimal production scheduling.

Bottling lines are found in food and beverage plants, and we will use them as an example – they perform a variety of functions. Typical locations on these lines include conveyor-in, filling, capping, labeling, and conveyor-out.

Once you have these locations defined in the Tipteh IoT platform, everything becomes easy. If there is a conveyor breakdown, all your operators have to do is choose the correct machine breakdown cause – conveyor breakdown, and the location – conveyor-in.

This feature will make it easier for you to analyze production downtime because it will make your data more transparent.

Don’t overthink

Here’s the key takeaway: Don’t overthink the problem. You probably already know what the most frequent breakdown causes are in your production. Get your team together, define the reasons together, and look at it as a continuous improvement process.

Contact us if you need help defining your breakdown causes or would like recommendations. We will be happy to help.