Beyond the Score: 10 Actionable OEE Improvement Strategies That Actually Work

• *Improving OEE isn't just about tracking a number; it's about systematically eliminating the "Six Big Losses" that drain your profitability.
   
•  Real improvement comes from a unified strategy that combines accurate data (OEE tracking), empowered people, and powerful execution
  tools (CMMS).
   
•  Focusing on your biggest constraint, shifting to proactive maintenance, and optimizing changeovers are the fastest ways to see a significant impact on your bottom line.

Let’s be blunt: manual data collection is a recipe for failure. Your operators are focused on running machines, not meticulously filling out log sheets. Paperwork gets lost, entries are rounded up or down, and by the time you compile it all in Excel, the information is already ancient history.

You can't make smart, real-time decisions with day-old data.

The non-negotiable first step is to automate your OEE data collection. This is the foundation upon which every other improvement is built. It provides an unbiased, minute-by-minute account of what's actually happening on your factory floor.

How Fabrico Helps: The Fabrico OEE module connects directly to your machines, capturing every stop, every change in speed, and every defect automatically. It’s the source of truth that eliminates arguments and allows you to focus on facts.

OEE can feel abstract. The Six Big Losses make it concrete. They are the six primary categories of productivity loss that OEE is designed to expose. Improving your OEE score is simply the result of reducing these losses.

Think of it like this: trying to improve OEE without understanding the Six Big Losses is like a doctor trying to treat a patient without knowing the symptoms.

The losses are broken into three main categories:

* Availability Losses:
* 1. Unplanned Stops (Breakdowns): The most obvious and costly loss.
* 2. Planned Stops (Changeovers & Adjustments): Time spent setting up a machine for the next product.

* Performance Losses:
* 3. Minor Stops & Idling: Short stops that operators often don't log manually.
* 4. Reduced Speed: Running a machine slower than its ideal design speed.

* Quality Losses:
* 5. Production Rejects: Defective parts produced during stable production.
* 6. Startup Rejects: Defective parts produced after a startup or changeover



Your goal isn't to "increase OEE." Your goal is to systematically attack these six profit drains.

According to the Theory of Constraints, every production line has one process that limits the entire system's output. This is your bottleneck or constraint.

Here’s a multi-million dollar piece of advice: any improvement made to a non-bottleneck machine is a waste of time and money.

If your packaging machine is the bottleneck, running your mixing machine 20% faster won't produce a single extra unit. Your real-time OEE data is the treasure map that leads you directly to your constraint. Once you’ve found it, focus all your initial improvement efforts there. A 5% improvement on the bottleneck is a 5% improvement for the entire factory's output.

The best data in the world is useless without a team that’s empowered to act on it. This phase is about closing the gap between your machines and your people.

Your machine operators are the first to notice when something is wrong. A strange noise, a slight vibration, a small leak—they see it all. But too often, they have no easy way to report it. They feel disconnected from the maintenance process, so small problems are ignored until they become catastrophic failures.

Empower them. Train them on the basics of the Six Big Losses so they understand why those small stops matter. More importantly, give them a dead-simple tool to report issues instantly.

How Fabrico Helps: With a user-friendly mobile CMMS like Fabrico, an operator can scan a QR code on a machine, snap a photo of the problem, and create a work request in under 30 seconds. This transforms them from passive observers into active participants in reliability.

In many factories, a wall of mistrust separates production and maintenance. Production blames maintenance for downtime. Maintenance blames production for running machines into the ground. It's a classic "blame game" that kills productivity.

The antidote is shared data and shared goals.

When the production manager and the maintenance manager are both looking at the same real-time OEE dashboard, the conversation shifts. It’s no longer about opinions and blame. It's about collaboratively analyzing the data and asking, "How do we solve this breakdown problem?"

With accurate data and an engaged team, you're ready to execute. This is where you translate insights into action and start seeing your OEE score climb.

This is the single most important strategy for improving your Availability score. Reactive maintenance, or "firefighting," is the #1 killer of OEE. It’s expensive, stressful, and completely unpredictable.

This is where the connection between OEE and a CMMS becomes crystal clear.
Your OEE data tells you which* machines are breaking down and why.
Your CMMS is the tool you use to schedule and manage the work* to prevent it from happening again.

How Fabrico Helps: Fabrico’s CMMS makes it incredibly simple to shift to a proactive model. You can create preventive maintenance (PM) schedules based on time or machine usage, assign tasks to technicians, and track PM compliance with a single click. No more missed PMs, no more surprise breakdowns.

Changeover time is a massive source of planned downtime. The SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) methodology is a systematic process for slashing that time, often by 50% or more.

The key is standardization. If every technician performs a changeover differently, your results will always be inconsistent. You need one best way, documented and followed every time.

How Fabrico Helps: You can store standardized digital checklists, SOPs, and even video tutorials directly within the work order in your Fabrico CMMS. This ensures every technician has instant access to the best practice, right on their mobile device, leading to faster, more consistent changeovers.
 

Fixing a machine is not the same as solving a problem. If the same motor burns out every three months, replacing the motor is just a temporary patch. A true long-term strategy requires you to find the root cause.

For your top recurring failure, as identified by your OEE data, conduct a simple Root Cause Analysis using a framework like the "5 Whys." Keep asking "why" until you uncover the foundational issue.

How Fabrico Helps: An effective RCA needs data. The maintenance history stored in your Fabrico CMMS is a goldmine of information. You can instantly pull up past work orders, see which parts were used, read technician notes, and identify failure patterns that would be impossible to find in a paper-based system.

Data that lives in a spreadsheet on a manager’s computer doesn't drive action. To create a culture of continuous improvement, performance needs to be visible to everyone on the shop floor.

Displaying real-time OEE dashboards in common areas creates accountability and a healthy sense of competition. When teams can see their performance in real-time, they become more engaged in improving it.

How Fabrico Helps: Fabrico's OEE dashboards are designed to be clean, clear, and intuitive. They translate complex machine data into simple visuals that everyone from the operator to the plant manager can understand at a glance.

This is the most critical point. The best strategies in the world will fail if the software you use to execute them is clunky, complicated, and hated by your team.

This is Plant Manager Paula's biggest fear: investing in a powerful system that her technicians refuse to use, turning it into expensive shelfware.

Your OEE improvement strategy is only as strong as your adoption rate. If the tool is hard to use, you'll get bad data, and the entire system falls apart.

How Fabrico Helps: We built Fabrico with one core obsession: ease of use. It’s a powerful CMMS and OEE platform that a technician can learn to use in minutes, not weeks. A system your team actually wants to use is a system that gets adopted. High adoption leads to accurate data, which leads to real, sustainable OEE improvement and a clear ROI.

A stagnant OEE score is a sign that your current process isn't working. It’s a question asking, "What are you going to do about these losses?"

Relying on manual data and disconnected systems won't get you there. You need a unified platform that lets you Observe the truth with automated OEE, Engage your people with user-friendly tools, and Execute a proactive maintenance strategy.

Stop chasing symptoms. Start solving problems.

See how Fabrico can transform your OEE improvement strategy by booking a personalized demo today.

What is a good OEE improvement strategy?
A good strategy is a holistic one that combines technology, process, and people. It starts with accurate, automated data collection (OEE monitoring), identifies the biggest sources of loss (bottlenecks, breakdowns), and uses a powerful tool like a CMMS to execute proactive maintenance and standardize work.

How do you increase availability in OEE?
The primary way to increase availability is by reducing unplanned downtime. This is achieved by shifting from a reactive ("firefighting") maintenance culture to a proactive one focused on preventive and predictive maintenance, all managed and tracked within a modern CMMS.

What are the three main components of an OEE improvement plan?
The three core components are:
1. Accurate Measurement: An automated system to track OEE and the Six Big Losses in real-time.
2. Systematic Analysis: A process for identifying the biggest constraints and finding the root cause of recurring problems.
3. Actionable Execution: A user-friendly tool (like a CMMS) that enables the maintenance team to execute proactive work, operators to report issues, and managers to track progress.

How can a CMMS help improve OEE?
A CMMS is the action-arm of an OEE strategy. While OEE software identifies problems like machine breakdowns (low availability), a CMMS is the system used to schedule preventive maintenance, manage work orders, track spare parts, and store critical maintenance history, all of which are essential to preventing those breakdowns from happening in the first place.