5 Fatal Mistakes to Avoid When Buying OEE Software for Your Factory

Mistake #1: Buying a Scoreboard Instead of a System of Action

If your OEE software only reports downtime without triggering a repair, it is just a digital scoreboard.

Many plants install dashboards that turn red in the manager’s office, but they provide no mobile instructions to the technician on the shop floor.

This creates an "Insight-Action Gap" where everyone knows the machine is failing, but no one has the digital tools to fix it in real-time.

Fabrico is a System of Action that natively integrates OEE with a Field-Ready CMMS to close this loop automatically.

Mistake #2: Relying Solely on PLC Signals for Root Cause Analysis

Machine signals tell you when a machine stops, but they are notoriously bad at telling you why.

A sensor can count a jam, but it cannot tell you if the jam was caused by a worn guide rail or a poor-quality material batch.

Without visual evidence, your continuous improvement team is forced to rely on "tribal knowledge" and subjective operator logs.

Fabrico’s Inefficiencies Zoom-In (Computer Vision) module provides visual proof of every downtime event, allowing you to see the truth behind the data.

Mistake #3: Ignoring the "Decision Latency" Tax

Decision Latency is the silent killer of profitability, representing the time wasted while a production loss waits for a manual maintenance response.

In many factories, this latency is measured in hours as supervisors track down technicians via radios or phone calls.

An integrated system reduces this to seconds by automatically triggering a prioritized Work Order the moment a performance threshold is breached.

Reducing this delay is the fastest way to reclaim your revenue capacity and lower your Maintenance Cost per Unit.

Mistake #4: Managing a Production Schedule Based on Assumptions

A production schedule that doesn't account for real-time machine health is a work of fiction.

If your planner doesn't know that a machine's OEE is trending downward due to mechanical wear, they will continue to schedule high-priority orders on failing assets.

Fabrico’s Interactive Planning Board uses Predictive Availability to sync your schedule with the actual capacity of your shop floor.

If a machine has a pending maintenance task or a performance drop, the board highlights the conflict so you can adjust the plan before the deadline is missed.

Mistake #5: Buying Software That Technicians Hate to Use

If the tool is too complex for Tom (the Lead Technician) to use on a mobile device, it will eventually become "shelfware."

Many enterprise systems are built for desktop computers, forcing technicians to walk back to the office to log their work.

This results in "Data Latency" and "Pencil Whipping," where data is entered inaccurately at the end of a shift.

Fabrico’s native, offline-capable mobile app ensures that maintenance standards are logged at the machine, increasing wrench time and data integrity.

Comparison Matrix: Common OEE Buying Strategies

The Strategic ROI: Reclaiming Your Hidden Factory

For Paula (the Strategic Leader), the biggest mistake is the "Cost of Doing Nothing" while revenue leaks through micro-stops.

By identifying "Bad Actor" assets through the 80/20 Rule, she can move her team to Condition-Directed Tasks that protect effective runtime.

This turns maintenance from a cost center into a strategic lever for Operational Excellence.

As the factory builds 12 months of clean operational data, it creates the foundation for the Fabrico Agent (AI Roadmap).

Stop buying dashboards. Start engineering uptime with a System of Action.