Good downtime labeling allows you to look at Amper data and come up with improvement projects quickly. It helps give you a baseline for where you're at currently, and how much you can improve your utilization by targeting select downtime reasons.
Amper’s Recommended Best Practices
Generally there are 2 approaches to setting up downtime codes that work best for customers. The first is to have many Downtime Reason Codes and few Sub-Reasons. The second is to have few top level Downtime Reason Categories and many Sub-Reasons. Below shows each methodology and the pros and cons with each.
Many Reasons and few Sub-Reasons
- Pro - Faster for operators to enter which can aid labeling compliance
- Con - Can be hard to see all the reasons on one page. Our most successful customers use this method and keep the reason code count to no more than 15.
This is a great way to uncover your most common Downtime Codes if you are unsure where to initially target your efforts. Once you have identified your key Downtime Codes, you add in more specific sub-Codes for a deeper dive.
Example Downtime Codes:
- Break/Lunch
- Meeting
- Training
- Setup
- Waiting on Material
- Machine Crash/Breakdown
- No person scheduled
- No demand
- Preventative Maintenance
- Maintenance Repair
- Shift Change
- QC
- Tool Change
- Loading the Machine
Few reasons many sub-reasons
- Pro - Cleaner look on first level, allows for better organization.
- Con - More clicks and can be difficult to remember where sub-reasons live.
Example Downtime Codes:
- Machine
- Breakdown/Crash
- Loading Machine
- Clean up
- Setup
- Tool change
- Manpower
- Break/Lunch
- Meeting
- Training
- No person scheduled
- Materials
- QC
- Waiting on Material
- Method
- Shift change
- No Demand
- Maintenance
- PM
- Maintenance repair