OEE for Edible Oil Bottling Lines: What to Measure and Where

An oil line looks simple. One liquid, a filler, a capper, a labeller and a packer.

Then winter comes, the oil in the tank gets thick, and the 5 L run ends 600 bottles short with no stop on the sheet.

This page is for people who run cooking oil filling lines and want numbers they can act on. We sell Fabrico, so test what we say like any other vendor's claims.

Where an edible oil bottling line loses time, speed and bottles

Most lines follow the same order. Bottles come from a PET blow moulder in line, or from an unscrambler fed with bought bottles or jerrycans.

Then a weight filler or a flow-meter filler, a capper for press-on or screw caps, a labeller, a shrink or case packer, and a palletiser.

Big bottles often get a carry handle fitted on the neck before the packer. Some caps also need a foil or induction seal after the capper.

Three things set oil apart from water or soft drinks. The product changes with temperature, it is slippery wherever it lands, and the formats run from small bottles to 5 L and jerrycans.

The losses that are specific to oil

Viscosity: the stop that never shows as a stop

Oil flows slower when it is cold. On a weight filler the fine-fill phase stretches, and on a flow-meter filler the valve stays open longer for the same volume.

The machine does not stop, so a stop log shows a clean shift. Only the count per hour gives it away.

That is why the ideal rate matters so much here. Set it from the best sustained speed with oil at normal temperature, not from the slow winter average.

If you log tank or product temperature, put it next to the hourly count. The pattern is often visible in one week.

Drip and oily bottles

A drop on the bottle shoulder at the filler is a label problem two machines later. Operators often add nozzle wait time to stop the drip, which costs speed.

So one cause can show up three ways: slower fill, short stops at the labeller, and rejects at the packer. Log the reject where it is found, and note the cause as drip.

Short stops to wipe a sensor or clear one skewed label add up fast. They belong with micro-stops, not with breakdowns.

Overfilled oil: report it beside OEE

Fillers are often set a little high so no bottle goes out under the declared content. That extra oil is giveaway.

An overfilled bottle is sellable, so it counts as a good bottle. Putting it into the quality factor would make OEE drop for a bottle the customer accepts.

Treat it this way: quality loss is bottles you cannot sell first time, like underfills, leakers and bad labels. Giveaway is a separate line, in litres and in money, per SKU.

Temperature plays in here too. Oil expands a little as it warms, so a fill set by volume does not weigh the same at every temperature.

We have a longer page on giveaway and overfill in OEE if you want the full argument.

Set the ideal rate per SKU, at the filler

The filler is usually the slowest machine on an oil line, and fill time grows with volume. So the line has one honest top speed per format.

These are example rates, not targets for your line. Take yours from the filler's design speed for that format, or from your best proven hour.

Now see what one shared rate does. Run 5 L and count 9,000 bottles in 400 minutes against the 1 L rate, and performance reads 22.5%.

Against the right rate of 25 a minute it reads 90%, for the same shift and the same crew. One number says the team failed, the other says they did well.

A blended rate set between the two is as bad. It makes the 1 L runs read above 100%, and that hides real speed loss.

Count in bottles, not litres or cases, and convert later. If the only counter is at the case packer, multiply by bottles per case and check it against the filler count for one shift.

Worked example: one 5 L shift

These are round example numbers and describe no real plant. The shift starts with a changeover from 1 L to 5 L.

• Planned time: 480 minutes.
• Stops: 80 minutes. The changeover took 45, and cap chute jams, label reel changes and a blocked palletiser took 35.
• Running time: 400 minutes.
• Ideal rate for 5 L: 25 bottles a minute, so 0.04 minutes per bottle.
• Bottles filled: 9,000. At the ideal rate, 400 minutes would give 10,000.
• Rejects: 180, from underfill, cocked caps and oily labels.
• Good bottles: 8,820.

• Availability: 400 of 480 minutes, or 83.3%.
• Performance: 9,000 of 10,000 bottles, or 90%.
• Quality: 8,820 of 9,000 bottles, or 98%.

Multiply them: 0.833 x 0.90 x 0.98 = 73.5%.

The 1,000 missing bottles are worth 40 minutes at the ideal rate. On this shift that is slow fill and short stops too small to log.

Now check it the short way: 8,820 good bottles x 0.04 minutes = 352.8 minutes of good running. That is 73.5% of 480 minutes, so both routes agree.

Giveaway is not in that 73.5%. Say the good bottles of this example shift were overfilled by 10 ml on average: 8,820 bottles x 10 ml is 88.2 litres given away.

Report it beside OEE, with a price on it. For the full method behind the three factors, see OEE calculation.

Planned time and changeovers on big formats

A change from 1 L to 5 L touches nearly every machine. That means moulds or bottle supply, filler nozzles and guides, capper heads, the handle unit, label reels, packer format and the pallet pattern.

Keep the changeover inside planned time and count it as stop time. If you take it out, a week with five format changes looks as good as a week with one.

Use one rule for start and end: last good bottle of the old SKU to first good bottle of the new one. The slow start after it is performance loss, so it stays visible too.

A change of oil type adds a flush. Give it its own stop reason, so it does not hide inside the format change.

Breaks and planned cleaning with no production planned can sit outside planned time. Write the rule down once, and use it on all shifts.

Where to count, and where a camera helps

You need two counts: bottles out of the filler, and good bottles at the end of the line. The gap between them is your reject number.

On many oil lines the filler PLC gives a usable count. On older lines, or on a jerrycan line built from single machines, there may be no signal you can use.

That is where a camera that counts parts can help. It can sit over the conveyor after the labeller, or at the packer, and count bottles or cases without a change to the PLC.

It also helps where one line packs mixed formats, like cases, shrink packs and loose 5 L bottles on one day. Clear bottles of clear oil can be hard for a camera to tell apart, so ask the vendor to show a count on your own formats.

More on this in camera-based OEE.

For the filler as a single machine, our page on filler OEE on a bottling line goes deeper.

What to check in OEE software for this line

Run these in the demo with any vendor, and with us. Bring one real shift with a format change in it.

Where Fabrico fits

Fabrico is a cloud-based OEE and light MES platform, on the web, iOS and Android.

• Stops: they come from the machine signal, through the PLC or a Fabrico IoT device. The operator adds the stop reason on a tablet or phone.
• OEE and downtime: availability, performance and quality, by line and by shift.
• Micro-stops: detected from the machine signal.
• Losses in money: losses can be shown in money, not only in minutes.
• Cameras: the AI camera is an add-on that counts parts. You can open the video of a stop. In the standard setup, video is streamed, not stored.
• Your data: REST API and webhooks, and any list exports to Excel or CSV.
• Maintenance: a stop reason can be set up to open a maintenance task.

Not in Fabrico today: production planning and scheduling. Predictive maintenance and suggested stop reasons are on the roadmap.

The checks above apply to us too. Ideal rates per SKU and giveaway tracking are the two to press us on with your own data.

Book a demo or Contact us.

What people ask next

What is a good OEE for an edible oil filling line?

There is no honest single number. It depends on how many formats you run, how often you change over, and how you define planned time.

Compare the line with itself: same SKU, same rules, week against week.

Should the ideal rate on an oil line come from the filler or the whole line?

From the slowest machine for that format, which on oil is usually the filler. Check it once per SKU, because on small bottles the labeller or packer can become the limit.

Where does overfilled oil show up in our numbers?

Not in OEE, because an overfilled bottle is a good bottle and stays in the good count. Track it as its own cost in litres and money.

Does a 1 L to 5 L changeover count against OEE?

Yes, if it happens inside planned time. It is an availability loss, and on lines with many big-format changes it is often the largest one.

How do we measure oil filling line downtime without a PLC count?

You need a run or stop signal and a count from somewhere. A sensor on the conveyor, an IoT device on the machine, or a camera that counts parts can give it.

Why is our 5 L line always slower in winter?

Cold oil is thicker and fills slower. Compare bottles per hour with product temperature for the same SKU, and you will see if that is the cause on your line.

Want to run these checks on your own oil line? Book a demo or Contact us.