Free CMMS and OEE Tracker for Plastics and Injection Moulding Plants
Track the losses specific to injection moulding, mould changeovers, purge cycles, short shots, granulate jams, for free, then bring in Fabrico to automate the whole loop.
The short answer
- Free tool: log a shift on your moulding line in about 2 minutes and get instant OEE, a downtime Pareto for changeovers and jams, work orders, PM schedules, and an asset register, no signup.
- Honest limit: it's manual entry, you investigate micro-stop causes yourself, and it runs on one device for one plant, no PLC feed, no multi-site view.
- Where plants outgrow it: once you're running several lines and chasing short shots and jams across shifts, manual logging can't keep up.
- The upgrade: Fabrico reads OEE straight off your press PLCs, uses computer vision to find the true cause of each micro-stop, and auto-routes the work order, plant-wide and multi-site.
Injection moulding plants lose time in patterns other industries don't see as much: mould changeovers, purging between colors or materials, granulate feed jams, short shots and flash that show up only after a part cools. A generic maintenance spreadsheet doesn't surface any of that clearly. The free OEE tracker and light CMMS at OEE Lab does, log a shift, get instant OEE with a downtime Pareto, and see exactly which stop category is costing your line the most.
This page walks through what the free tool genuinely covers for a plastics or moulding operation, where it draws the line, and what a plant graduates to once it's running several lines and can't afford to chase every micro-stop by hand. If you haven't run the numbers yet, start with the OEE calculator or size your losses with the downtime cost calculator and the hidden factory calculator.
The honest version: the free tracker is manual entry, you investigate causes yourself, and it runs on one device for one plant. That's genuinely useful for a single line getting its first real numbers. It is not built for a multi-site plastics group reading OEE automatically off PLCs and auto-routing work orders, that's what Fabrico is for.
What you get, free
2-minute shift logging for injection moulding lines
Log a shift on your press or line in about 2 minutes: run time, stops, reject count. No spreadsheet, no paperwork.
Instant OEE with the plastics-relevant breakdown
See availability, performance, and quality the moment you log a shift, plus a comparison against the 85% world-class benchmark so you know where a moulding line actually stands.
Downtime Pareto for mould changeovers, jams, and purges
Every stop you log gets ranked, so you can see fast whether changeovers, granulate jams, or purge cycles are eating the most time on a given line.
Work orders board and asset register for presses and moulds
Raise a work order the moment you spot a loss, and keep an asset register for presses, moulds, hot runners, and auxiliary equipment, all free.
Preventive-maintenance schedule you control
Set PM intervals for mould servicing, screw and barrel checks, or hot runner maintenance, and the board tracks what is due.
Shareable scorecard, CSV/JSON export, installable PWA
Export your shift data any time, share a scorecard with your shift lead or plant manager, and install the tracker as an app on a shop-floor tablet. No account needed to start.
Log one shift and the free tracker shows your OEE, your loss Pareto and how you compare to world-class. Add work orders and preventive-maintenance reminders in the same place.
Where free stops, and Fabrico begins
The free tracker is built for getting started fast and for one plant on one device. When a site gets serious about its losses, the manual steps start to cost more than they save. This is exactly where Fabrico takes over.
| Capability | Free OEE Lab tracker | Fabrico |
|---|---|---|
| Data capture | Log each moulding shift by hand in about 2 minutes, data stays in your browser. | Reads OEE automatically off your presses' PLCs, no manual entry. |
| Micro-stop cause | You investigate short shots, jams, and sub-5-minute stops yourself and note the reason. | Computer vision identifies the true cause of each micro-stop, with video evidence. |
| Loss-to-fix loop | You spot a mould or changeover loss, then raise the work order yourself on the board. | A detected loss becomes an auto-routed work order, assigned automatically. |
| Scope and multi-site | One press or line on one device and browser, best for a single line or shift. | Plant-wide and multi-site from one central cloud view across all your moulding lines. |
| Integrations | Standalone, run it on its own, export data when you need it elsewhere. | Integrates with PLCs, MES, and ERP so OEE flows with your stack. |
| Access and roles | Local device sign-in with people and roles on that one device. | Org SSO with roles across the plant and a full audit trail. |
| Reporting | Instant OEE, availability, performance, quality, a downtime Pareto, and CSV/JSON export you run yourself. | Live plant-wide dashboards plus scheduled reports delivered automatically. |
| Support and onboarding | Self-serve, start free with no account and no setup call. | Guided onboarding and ongoing support from the Fabrico team. |
Frequently asked questions
Is this free CMMS actually free for a plastics or injection moulding plant, or is it a trial?
The OEE Lab tracker is free with no signup and no expiry. You open it, log a shift for your moulding line, and it stores data in your browser. There is no trial clock and no card required. That's a different model from trial-oriented options like Evocon's free trial, which is built as an on-ramp to a paid plan.
How does the free tracker handle short stops on an injection moulding line, like mould changeovers or purging?
You log each stop with a reason and duration, and the downtime Pareto ranks your worst causes so you can see if changeovers, purging, or jamming dominate your losses. It will not tell you the true cause of a sub-5-minute micro-stop on its own, that's manual investigation on your side, which is exactly the gap Fabrico's computer-vision true-cause closes.
Can I track granulate scrap and reject rates specific to plastics processing?
Yes. The quality metric in the tracker is generic (good parts vs total parts), so you log rejects (short shots, flash, contamination) as your quality loss, and the tool rolls it into OEE and the benchmark comparison. It won't auto-classify defect types from a camera, that level of automatic defect detection is a Fabrico-side capability.
What happens when one line's free tracker isn't enough for a multi-line plastics plant?
The free tool runs per device and browser, so a single line or shift works well, but coordinating several injection moulding lines across shifts and buildings gets manual fast. That's the point where booking a Fabrico demo makes sense: plant-wide and multi-site OEE from one central view, with PLC data flowing in automatically.
Does the free CMMS side cover preventive maintenance for moulds and hot runners?
Yes, you can build an asset register for your presses, moulds, and hot runner systems, then set preventive-maintenance schedules and raise work orders on the board. It's manual (you decide when a PM is due and who does it), which is standard for free-tier CMMS tools like Limble, MaintainX, UpKeep, and Fiix, whose free tiers are primarily on-ramps to their paid plans.
Is my plastics plant's data safe if it just lives in the browser?
It stays local on the device you use, nothing goes to a server, which is fine for a single line getting started. Once security posture matters at scale (SSO, audit trail, EU data residency), that's a Fabrico-level need, not something a browser-local free tool is built for.
When free is not enough, Fabrico is the upgrade
Once a plastics or injection moulding plant is running multiple lines and shifts, manual shift logging and chasing every short shot or jam by hand becomes the bottleneck, not the answer. Fabrico reads OEE automatically off your press PLCs plant-wide and across sites, uses computer vision to identify the true cause of each micro-stop with video evidence, and closes the loop by auto-routing a detected loss straight into an assigned work order. It's EU-built with EU data residency, outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act, and its SSO, roles, and audit trail support audit-readiness against ISO 27001, 20000-1, and 9001. Book a demo to see it running on a moulding line's actual data.
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Open the free OEE tracker · OEE calculator · CMMS ROI calculator · Downtime cost calculator · Hidden factory calculator · OEE by industry