Reading an old trade journal and saw a crazy number about machine uptime

I was flipping through a 2005 issue of Modern Machine Shop at the library and saw a stat that only 27% of shops tracked their CNC machine uptime back then. That blew my mind, because now it feels like everyone talks about OEE. I guess the focus on data is a lot newer than I thought. How many of you actually log your machine's uptime versus just running it until it breaks?

3 comments

3 Comments

milabutler1mo ago

Wait, is that 27% number for shops that tracked it at all, or for shops that tracked it well? Because I remember a lot of places back then had a clipboard on the machine that nobody filled out, so they technically "tracked" it but the data was junk. Now with cheap sensors, actually knowing your uptime is way more common than just having a system on paper.

green.mason1mo agoMost Upvoted

You're totally right about the clipboard thing. My uncle ran a small shop and had a binder for machine logs that was just filled with coffee stains and old lunch orders. The number might as well have been pulled from thin air. It reminds me of when we switched from paper charts to digital records at work, the old data was often a best guess scribbled in a hurry.

grant56919d ago

Yeah that "technically tracked" thing is a huge point. Do you think the study even tried to tell the difference between real data and just having a clipboard on the wall?