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Improving OEE in a print shop

Availability × Performance × Quality — measured on the constraint, not on every machine.

9 minPrint Profit Navigator EditorialUpdated 10/06/2026

TL;DR

  • Typical garment decoration OEE sits between 35% and 60%; world class is not the target, trend is.
  • Measure OEE only on the bottleneck — elsewhere it drives the wrong behaviour.
  • Ten OEE points on the constraint is usually cheaper than a second machine.

Shops buy capacity they already own. Before adding a press, find out how many of its scheduled hours actually produce sellable prints.

OEE
OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality
  • Availability = run time / planned production time
  • Performance = (ideal cycle × units) / run time
  • Quality = good units / total units

Automatic press, one shift

Planned time
7.5 h
Setup + downtime
2.6 h → Availability 65%
Speed vs ideal
82%
Quality
96.5%
OEE
≈ 51% — 3.8 productive hours out of 7.5

Raising availability to 78% adds roughly 45 minutes of sellable press time per shift without any investment.

  • Log downtime reasons in five categories, not fifty.
  • Attack setup and material waiting first — they dominate availability.
  • Only then look at speed; running faster with unstable quality reduces OEE.

Interactive example

Investment, monthly benefit — payback, ROI and NPV

Payback
11.8 months
ROI over 36 months
206 %
NPV
€ 171.250

Same calculation kernel as the full calculators. For a decision-grade result, open the matching calculator.

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