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Review OEE timelines

Read the OEE Timeline to see how each asset or operator spent its time, spot and categorise downtime, and correct mislabelled or overrun records within the last 48 hours.

The OEE Timeline is an analytics view that lays out how your equipment and people spent their time as a horizontal, Gantt-style band per asset or per operator. OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness, a standard manufacturing measure that combines how much of the available time a machine was actually producing (availability), how fast it ran versus its expected rate (performance), and how much of the output was good (quality). The timeline turns raw production timers, downtime events, and recorded output into a single picture so you can see, hour by hour, when an asset was running, when it was stopped, and why.

Use this view when you want to move past a single headline percentage and understand the story behind it: which stops ate into a shift, whether a long "downtime" block was really one event or several, and whether the recorded reasons match what actually happened on the floor. Because the timeline reads directly from the same production records that feed every other OEE report, correcting a mislabelled or overrun record here fixes it everywhere.

Before you start

You reach the OEE Timeline from the left sidebar under Analytics → OEE Timeline, which offers two views:

  • Assets — one row per asset, at /analytics/oee-timeline/assets
  • Users — one row per operator, at /analytics/oee-timeline/users

Two things must be in place before either view shows data:

  • Permission to view. You need the "View OEE" permission (analytics.view_oee). In a standard Bulk role setup this is granted to the Super user, Entity admin, Manager, and Dashboards roles. Without it the OEE Timeline entry does not appear in your sidebar.
  • At least one dashboard. Each view is driven by a saved dashboard that decides which assets or users appear. If none exists yet, the page shows an empty state ("No asset dashboards configured" or "No user dashboards configured") with a Go to Settings button that takes you to Settings → OEE → Dashboards or Settings → OEE → User Dashboards to create one.

Editing a record on the timeline (covered below) needs a separate permission and is described in its own section.

OEE Timeline Assets view with summary cards above a Gantt-style band of coloured running and downtime segments per asset.
The Assets view: summary metrics on top, a time band per asset, and the Status Key legend explaining each colour.

analytics.oee-timeline-01

Choose a dashboard and a time window

The floating navigation island at the top of the page controls what you are looking at:

  • Dashboard selector. The button on the left shows the current dashboard name; open it to search ("Search dashboards...") and switch. A star marks the default dashboard.
  • Date controls. Use the left and right arrows to step one day back or forward, click the date to pick any day from a calendar, and click Show Today to jump back to the current day.
  • Zoom. The magnifier buttons zoom the time axis in and out. The window is bounded: you can zoom in to as tight as one hour and out to as wide as seven days.

The view opens on a single day by default. Panning and zooming change only what is on screen; the summary metrics recalculate to match the visible window, so the numbers you read always describe exactly the span you are looking at.

Read the summary metrics

Above the timeline, a row of cards summarises the visible window. In the Assets view they are labelled in asset-time (time summed across every asset on the dashboard); in the Users view they read in person-time (summed across every operator):

  • Average OEE — the headline percentage for the window.
  • Running asset-time / person-time — total time spent producing, with its share of the total.
  • Downtime asset-time / person-time — total stopped time, with its share.
  • Inactive asset-time / person-time — time that was neither running nor an attributed stop.
  • Loss Categories — how the downtime splits across the three OEE loss types: Availability, Performance, and Quality, each shown as a percentage of total downtime.

A footer line states the exact window the metrics cover, for example "Showing metrics for: Jan 15, 06:00 - 18:00".

Read the timeline

Each asset or operator gets one horizontal row. Coloured blocks (segments) along the row show what was happening at each moment, and the Status Key legend at the bottom names each colour:

  • Running — the machine or person was producing.
  • Downtime — a stop, coloured by its loss category: Availability, Performance, or Quality.
  • Unknown — a hatched block for time the system could not attribute.

Hover any segment to see a tooltip. A downtime tooltip shows the reason name, its OEE category, the duration, start and end times, who added it, and any notes. The row also carries a small OEE percentage for that asset or person over the visible window, so you can compare rows at a glance.

The legend includes a standing reminder: "Literal view. Very short events may show as hairlines at day zoom. Zoom in to inspect them." A brief stop can shrink to a thin line at a full-day zoom, so zoom in before concluding a gap is empty.

Inspect a running segment

Left-click a running (green) segment, or right-click it and choose View details, to open a details dialog for that production run. It summarises how many recording batches were logged, how much was produced, and how many quality issues were recorded, alongside a mini-timeline and a batch-by-batch list with timestamps. In the Users view, clicking an operator's name opens that person's employee record on its production tab; if no employee record is linked, Bulk tells you so rather than opening an empty dialog.

Correct a record

The timeline is not only for reading. When a stop was logged against the wrong reason, or a timer overran because someone forgot to stop it, you can fix the record in place so the OEE figures reflect reality. These corrections change the underlying production records and are governed by two rules:

  • Permission. Editing needs the "Manual timer entry" permission (production_operate.timer_manual_entry), granted in a standard setup to the Super user, Entity admin, Tablet user, and Master data roles. Without it you can still view and inspect everything, but the edit affordances do not appear.
  • A rolling 48-hour window. You can only edit segments whose record started within the last 48 hours, and any new edge you set must also stay inside that window and never land in the future. Older history is read-only. If you try to reach outside the window, Bulk blocks the save with "Edits are only allowed for the last 48 hours."

When both conditions are met, three corrections are available:

  • Change a downtime reason. Right-click a downtime segment and choose Change downtime reason. Pick a new reason from the list and save; Bulk sets the loss category automatically from the reason you choose, so you never categorise it by hand. If the reason is configured to require a comment, a Notes field appears and must be filled before you can save.
  • Resize a segment. Select an editable segment to reveal its edge handles, then drag either edge to lengthen or shorten it. The right-click menu shows a "Drag either edge to resize" hint whenever the segment is wide enough to grab.
  • Fill a gap. If shrinking a running segment opens a gap next to a neighbouring block, a Fill gap with downtime dialog appears, pre-set to the freed span. Choose a reason to record that freed time as downtime, and Bulk shrinks the run and inserts the downtime in a single step.

Categories follow the reason

You never pick a loss category directly on the timeline. Availability, Performance, and Quality are copied from the downtime reason you select, so keeping your reason list well organised is what keeps the Loss Categories breakdown meaningful. Manage that list under Settings → OEE → Downtime reasons.

Example: correcting an overrun stop at Leeds Fabrication Plant

Dana Winters, who runs the Leeds Fabrication Plant for Granite Peak Manufacturing, reviews the previous shift each morning. On the Assets view she opens the "Leeds — Press Shop" dashboard and sees the Press Brake sitting at a lower Average OEE than expected. Its row shows one long red (Availability) downtime block just after the shift change.

Hovering the block shows it was logged as "Awaiting material" for 95 minutes, but Dana knows the crew ran a tooling changeover during that time. She right-clicks the segment, chooses Change downtime reason, selects "Tooling changeover" (a Performance-category reason), adds a short note, and saves. The block recolours to the Performance category and the Loss Categories card rebalances from Availability toward Performance.

Next she notices the Laser Cutter's morning run appears to stretch 40 minutes past the point production actually stopped, because an operator forgot to end the timer. Dana selects the running segment, drags its right edge back to the true stop time, and in the Fill gap with downtime dialog that opens she marks the freed 40 minutes as "Unplanned maintenance" and saves. The run shortens, the gap becomes an attributed stop, and the shift's OEE now matches what happened on the floor.

Expected result

After a review pass, the visible window reflects reality: running blocks match the times production was actually happening, stops carry the correct reasons and loss categories, and the summary cards, the per-row OEE percentages, and every downstream OEE report update to agree. Because these are edits to the source records rather than annotations, the corrected picture is what everyone else sees too.

Limitations and feature state

  • Editing is limited to the last 48 hours. Segments older than the rolling window are read-only for everyone. This is a deliberate guardrail so historical OEE cannot be rewritten long after the fact.
  • Splitting and converting segments are not available. You can change a reason, resize a segment, and fill a resize-vacated gap. Splitting a single block into several, or converting a running block into downtime directly, are planned for a later release and are not part of this view today.
  • Data freshness. The timeline reads from a maintained analytics layer that trails live activity slightly. When that layer is catching up, a banner appears above the timeline noting the delay and offering a retry; the figures settle once it recovers.
  • A dashboard defines the scope. The view only shows the assets or users on the selected dashboard, so an asset missing from the timeline usually means it is missing from the dashboard, not that it had no activity.

Troubleshooting

  • The OEE Timeline is missing from my sidebar. You likely lack the "View OEE" permission. Ask an administrator to grant a role that includes it (Super user, Entity admin, Manager, or Dashboards).
  • The page says no dashboards are configured. No dashboard has been created for that view yet. Use the Go to Settings button to open Settings → OEE → Dashboards (assets) or Settings → OEE → User Dashboards (users) and create one.
  • The save was blocked with "Edits are only allowed for the last 48 hours." The segment, or the new edge you set, falls outside the rolling 48-hour window. You can only correct recent records; older history cannot be changed here.
  • I cannot see any edit options. Confirm the segment started within the last 48 hours and that your role includes the "Manual timer entry" permission. Very narrow segments cannot be dragged, so the resize hint is hidden until you zoom in far enough to grab an edge.
  • A stop looks like it vanished. Short stops render as hairlines at a full-day zoom. Use the zoom-in control to inspect them before assuming the time was unattributed.

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Read the Asset Revenue report to see how much sales value each machine or workstation earns, ranked by revenue and broken down by job and customer.

Use the asset board

Open and read the asset board, a TV-ready live view of shop-floor asset status, output, and efficiency for one site.

On this page

Before you startChoose a dashboard and a time windowRead the summary metricsRead the timelineInspect a running segmentCorrect a recordExample: correcting an overrun stop at Leeds Fabrication PlantExpected resultLimitations and feature stateTroubleshootingRelated