Look, I get it. You've probably seen the slick demo videos: a plant manager taps a tablet, a beautiful dashboard appears, and suddenly they know everything about every machine in the building. Then you look at your own shop floor and see operators writing cycle counts on clipboards and maintenance techs keeping downtime logs in spiral notebooks.
The gap between the marketing vision and manufacturing reality is real. But so is the opportunity. I've worked with manufacturers who went from "we think our OEE is around 60%" to having real-time, machine-level OEE data that drove a 15-point improvement in six months. The difference wasn't magic — it was building the right monitoring system and, more importantly, designing it so people actually use it.
Here's how we approach production monitoring at Of Ash and Fire, from the raw data all the way to the decisions it enables.
Why Most Production Monitoring Projects Fail
Before we get into how to do it right, let me be honest about what goes wrong. I've audited monitoring systems at plants where six-figure platforms sit unused, and the failure modes are consistent:
- The data is there but nobody looks at it. Dashboards designed by IT for IT. The operator on the floor doesn't need 47 charts — they need three numbers and a color.
- The data is wrong. Manual entry, miscategorized downtime, sensors that drifted out of calibration months ago. Bad data is worse than no data because it erodes trust.
- It monitors but doesn't help. Knowing that Machine 7 was down for 3 hours yesterday is history. Knowing that Machine 7's spindle vibration has been climbing for two weeks is actionable.
- Nobody agreed on the definitions. What counts as "downtime"? Does changeover count? What about scheduled maintenance? If your production manager, maintenance manager, and operations director are all using different definitions, the numbers are meaningless.
Start With OEE — But Get the Definitions Right
Overall Equipment Effectiveness is the standard metric for production performance, and for good reason. It combines three critical factors into a single number that tells you how well your equipment is performing relative to its theoretical maximum.