For plant managers & CI leads

Your 85% OEE isprobably a story.

Micro-stops get dropped. Changeovers get relabeled “planned.” The dashboard stays green while a fifth of your capacity hides in plain sight — until you buy a machine to replace capacity you already own. This grader computes every line’s OEE twice, reported and true, and refuses to call a number honest when time has been hidden from it.

Get the Grader — $99one-time · instant download · yours to keep
Five deliverables · runnable
OEE Honesty Grader engine
Python
Grader workbook (.xlsx)
.xlsx
OEE-audit facilitator guide
.docx
Availability-integrity runbook
.docx
Seven-line worked sample
.csv
Works alongside
Manufacturing Ops Pack · CSV Quality Gate · Supplier-Concentration Gate
01.The Problem

The most-quoted number on the plant floor is the one nobody checks.

20–30%

of capacity commonly hides in the “hidden factory” that inflated OEE conceals — capacity a plant tries to buy new when it already owns it.

3 ways

OEE gets softened: micro-stops excluded under a threshold, changeovers reclassified as planned, and reduced-speed running counted at full rate.

6 figures

is the size of a single avoidable line or capex decision made off a number that omitted the very time the new machine was meant to recover.

Every AI vendor on the floor is selling prediction — sensors, vision, digital twins, a six-figure pilot. None of them check whether the number you already report is telling the truth. That is arithmetic, not machine learning, and it is where the money actually leaks.

02.See It Work

Grade a line yourself. Watch a good number get caught.

Live grader · evaluated 2026-06-30

INFLATED
77.6%
true OEE
Reported OEE
83.8%
Inflation
+6.1 pts
Hidden minutes
60.0
Weakest · Availability
79.2%
Availability
79.2%
Performance
100.0%
Quality
98.0%

60.0 minutes were hidden from availability, so this line reads INFLATED even at a true 77.6%. Tap "Restore hidden time" to see it release to its real band.

Scores an equipment number, never a person. Deterministic and offline — your inputs, no benchmark multiplier.

The worked line runs at a true 77.6% — a genuinely strong OEE — yet reads INFLATED because 60 minutes were hidden from availability. Restore the hidden time and the same line releases to TRUE OEE. That is the whole discipline: the gate makes the reporting honest so the number can be trusted.

03.The Engine

One command reads your shift log and grades every line.

$ python3 oee_grader.py sample_lines.csv --as-of 2026-06-30
==================================================================
OEE HONESTY GRADER  -  RedHub AI  (OEE-099)
Evaluation date: 2026-06-30
==================================================================

Line: Line 1 - Filler
  Reported OEE :  83.8%
  True OEE     :  77.6%   (inflation +6.1 pts)  <- hidden time
  A / P / Q    : 79.2% / 100.0% / 98.0%
  Weakest      : Availability at 79.2%
  Hidden mins  : 60.0
  VERDICT      : INFLATED

Line: Line 1 - Filler (cleaned up)
  Reported OEE :  77.6%
  True OEE     :  77.6%   (inflation +0.0 pts)
  A / P / Q    : 79.2% / 100.0% / 98.0%
  Weakest      : Availability at 79.2%
  Hidden mins  : 0.0
  VERDICT      : TRUE OEE

Line: Line 2 - Capper
  Reported OEE :  81.3%
  True OEE     :  81.3%   (inflation +0.0 pts)
  A / P / Q    : 87.5% / 94.3% / 98.5%
  Weakest      : Availability at 87.5%
  Hidden mins  : 0.0
  VERDICT      : TRUE OEE

Line: Line 3 - Labeler
  Reported OEE :  61.1%
  True OEE     :  61.1%   (inflation +0.0 pts)
  A / P / Q    : 68.8% / 92.9% / 95.7%
  Weakest      : Availability at 68.8%
  Hidden mins  : 0.0
  VERDICT      : TRUE OEE

Line: Line 4 - Palletizer
  Reported OEE :  66.3%
  True OEE     :  63.2%   (inflation +3.0 pts)  <- hidden time
  A / P / Q    : 65.6% / 100.0% / 96.4%
  Weakest      : Availability at 65.6%
  Hidden mins  : 45.0
  VERDICT      : INFLATED

Line: Line 5 - Case Packer
  Reported OEE :  74.8%
  True OEE     :  74.8%   (inflation +0.0 pts)
  A / P / Q    : 81.3% / 93.8% / 98.0%
  Weakest      : Availability at 81.3%
  Hidden mins  : 0.0
  VERDICT      : TRUE OEE

Line: Line 6 - Shrink Wrapper
  Reported OEE :  48.9%
  True OEE     :  48.9%   (inflation +0.0 pts)
  A / P / Q    : 60.4% / 86.9% / 93.1%
  Weakest      : Availability at 60.4%
  Hidden mins  : 0.0
  VERDICT      : SOFT NUMBER

------------------------------------------------------------------
PLANT REPORTING VERDICT : INFLATED REPORTING
Fix first               : Line 1 - Filler (inflation +6.1 pts, true OEE 77.6%)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Scores an equipment number, never a person. Not a safety-compliance
certification and not accounting advice.

Stdlib-only Python, no install beyond Python itself. The workbook reproduces these exact verdicts, and the demo above computes the identical numbers — verified byte-for-byte on the shipped sample.

04.The Standard

Three rules keep the number honest.

Reported vs. true, side by side

Every line is computed both ways from your own inputs. The gap between them is the inflation — named, in points, not buried.

Hidden time is dispositive

Any minute omitted from availability forces INFLATED, whatever the true number. An OEE that omits time is not an OEE. Clear the exclusions and it releases.

World-standard math, no multiplier

Availability × Performance × Quality, exactly as the standard defines it. No benchmark stat, no invented uplift — just your numbers.

05.What It Is — And Isn't

A reporting-integrity check, not a sensor or a scorecard for people.

What it is
  • A deterministic, offline grader you run on shift facts you already have.
  • A way to expose the hidden factory before it drives a capital decision.
  • A workbook and engine that agree byte-for-byte, so any team can reproduce the verdict.
What it isn’t
  • Not a sensor, PLC integration, or predictive-maintenance model — it connects to nothing.
  • It scores an equipment number, never a person, operator, or crew.
  • Not a safety-compliance certification and not accounting advice.
06.Who It's For

Anyone who signs off on an OEE number or spends against one.

Built for
  • Plant and operations managers who report OEE up the chain
  • Continuous-improvement and lean leads running the numbers
  • Finance and ops reviewing a capacity or capex request
  • Consultants auditing a plant's reporting before a project
Not built for
  • Real-time line monitoring — this grades a window, not a live feed
  • Ranking or evaluating operators or shifts
  • Plants that want a black-box AI score instead of the arithmetic
  • Replacing your MES — it reads facts you export from it
07.Pairs Well With

Build the honest number, then act on it.

Manufacturing & Distribution Ops Pack

$89

Seven Claude skills for the make-and-move surface, plus a runnable inventory auditor.

View

CSV / Data-Export Schema & Quality Gate

$69

Grade whether your exported shift or MES file is fit to be processed before any tool reads it.

View

The Supplier-Concentration Risk Gate

$99

The plant risk desk's other half — computes single-source exposure from your own spend.

View
08.Common Questions

The honest answers.

Height and honesty are different problems. A low OEE is a real number that happens to be small — that is a SOFT NUMBER, and it is fine to report as long as nothing is hidden. An inflated OEE is a number that looks healthy only because lost time was quietly removed from the availability calculation: micro-stops dropped because they fell under a threshold, or changeover minutes reclassified as "planned" beyond your own changeover budget. The grader computes your OEE both ways — as reported and as true — and the gap between them is the inflation. Any hidden time at all makes the line read INFLATED, whatever the true number is.

Stop reporting a number
you can’t defend.

One purchase, lifetime access, 12 months of updates. $99, once.

Get the OEE Honesty Grader — $99

Sold by RedHub AI LLC · Secured by Stripe · redhub.ai