Four Lines, 83 Days, $1.4M
A real TRI assessment on a food manufacturing facility. Line names anonymized. Numbers are real.
The facility
Four production lines at a food manufacturing plant. 83 calendar days of actual hourly OEE data (December 2025 through February 2026), aggregated to shift-level. Roughly 1,500 production hours per line. Target OEE: 65%.
The plant was underperforming. Everyone knew it. The question was: which line should get attention first, and what kind of attention?
What OEE said
The Monday morning conversation was straightforward: Bravo and Charlie are the better lines (~31% OEE). Alpha and Delta are worse (~18–19% OEE). Focus on Alpha and Delta.
| Line | Shifts | Avg OEE | OEE Ranking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bravo | 208 | 31.7% | #1 |
| Charlie | 221 | 31.1% | #2 |
| Alpha | 220 | 19.3% | #3 |
| Delta | 167 | 18.2% | #4 |
Reasonable. Logical. And wrong about almost everything that matters for deciding what to do next.
What TRI revealed
| Line | OEE | CV | RF | TRI | State | TRI Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlie | 31.1% | 0.118 | 0.790 | 0.380 | Level 2 — Review | #1 |
| Bravo | 31.7% | 0.248 | 0.609 | 0.299 | Level 2 — Review | #2 |
| Alpha | 19.3% | 0.285 | 0.565 | 0.168 | Level 3 — Escalate | #3 |
| Delta | 18.2% | 0.721 | 0.236 | 0.067 | Level 4 — Critical | #4 |
The rankings shift. But the real story is in the details.
Finding 1: “Same OEE” hides a 27% reliability gap. Bravo and Charlie both run ~31% OEE. OEE says they’re equivalent. But Charlie’s CV is 0.118 — best-in-class consistency. Bravo’s CV is 0.248 — moderate instability with weeks swinging between 43.9% and 11.3%. Charlie is 27% more reliable. A planner treating them as equivalent will be wrong more often than right.
Finding 2: Delta is in crisis, and OEE doesn’t convey the severity. Delta’s 18.2% OEE is close to Alpha’s 19.3%, suggesting they’re comparable. They’re not. Delta’s CV of 0.721 is catastrophic — output is essentially random noise. Alpha is 2.5x more reliable. Alpha needs throughput improvement. Delta needs stabilization before any other intervention makes sense.
Finding 3: OEE-based prioritization sends CI to the wrong line. A traditional Pareto points at Alpha and Delta as equally bad. VOI analysis identifies Delta stabilization as the highest-return intervention in the plant — ~$280K annual recovery at an estimated $15–25K cost. Alpha needs a different kind of intervention entirely. Same “bad OEE.” Different root cause. Different fix. Different owner.
The 83-day narrative
Here’s what the weekly TRI trajectory showed — events that OEE reporting missed entirely.
Week 49 — Dec 1–7
OEE says focus on Alpha and Delta. TRI catches something else: Charlie is wobbling. TRI = 0.232 despite 37% OEE. High variance the average hides. Without TRI, this passes unremarked.
Weeks 51–52 — Dec 15–28
Bravo crashes from 40.6% to 20.8% OEE. TRI decomposes the collapse: RF drops to 0.380, TRI falls 49% in one week. Level 3 Escalate triggered on Alpha. Level 2 Review on Bravo. Standard reporting would flag this as a “bad week” and move on.
Week 01 — Jan 1–7
All lines report mediocre OEE. Not alarming. But Charlie’s reliability collapses to its worst of the entire 83 days: RF = 0.159, TRI = 0.076. Something happened that the 26.1% average hides completely. In a traditional review, this week passes because 26.1% is “about average for Charlie.”
Week 02 — Jan 8–14
Bravo recovers dramatically: TRI jumps from 0.154 to 0.411, best of the entire period. RF surges to 0.773. Something changed. If identified, that’s a reproducible improvement worth documenting and protecting.
Weeks 06–08 — February
Delta’s descent into crisis. TRI drops from 0.083 to 0.079 to 0.067. CV reaches 0.721 — 2.5x the highest variance in the plant. The line is in freefall. In a traditional review, Delta looks “about the same” until catastrophic failure. TRI forces attention six weeks earlier.
The money
Every TRI alert carries a dollar estimate of the exposure it represents — lost throughput, excess labor, service risk, emergency maintenance, quality events, safety stock, and expediting.
Total annualized exposure across four lines
The highest-return intervention: Stabilizing Delta (reducing CV from 0.721 to 0.400) recovers approximately $280K per year at an estimated cost of $15–25K. Delta accounts for 36% of total plant exposure despite second-lowest volume. A traditional Pareto would send CI to a different line. VOI analysis catches it.
What this changes
With OEE alone, the Monday meeting says: “Bravo and Charlie are fine. Alpha and Delta are bad. Let’s run another Pareto.”
With TRI, the Monday meeting says:
- Delta is Level 4 Critical. Stabilization sprint. Containment plan. This line is destroying $510K/year and the variance is getting worse.
- Alpha is Level 3 Escalate. Needs throughput improvement, but it’s 2.5x more reliable than Delta — a different kind of problem requiring a different kind of fix.
- Bravo demonstrated it can run at 0.411 TRI. Find out what drove Week 02’s recovery and make it the standard.
- Charlie is the most dependable line in the plant. Plan around it with confidence. Protect whatever practices keep it there.
Same data. Same MES export. Completely different operating decisions.
What is your OEE data hiding?
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Throughput Reliability Index is proprietary methodology of Crusoe Advisory LLC.