Free CMMS for Printing and Label Converters, with a Built-in OEE Tracker
Track the losses that actually hit press and converting lines, make-ready and plate changes, web breaks, colour changeovers, and register micro-stops, free in your browser with no account. Log a shift in about two minutes and see your OEE, downtime Pareto, and work orders in one place.
The short answer
- Start free: the OEE Lab tracker at oee-tracker.html logs a printing shift in about two minutes with your own press downtime codes (plate change, make-ready, web break, colour changeover, register fault), no account and no install.
- What you get: instant OEE with availability, performance, and quality, a downtime Pareto, a work order board, PM schedule, asset register, per-machine breakdown, and CSV plus JSON export, all free and local to your browser.
- Its honest limit: you still log each shift by hand and investigate the fast web-break and register causes yourself, and it runs on one device for one plant.
- When to upgrade: once micro-stops need automatic PLC capture and computer-vision true-cause across several presses, Fabrico is the honest paid step up.
Printing and label lines lose most of their OEE in short, repeating hits rather than one big breakdown. A plate change and make-ready on the flexo or offset press, a web break on the laminator, a colour changeover that scraps the first few metres, a register kick that puts print out of tolerance, a die-cut jam on the finishing line: each stop is a minute or two, but at press speed a handful an hour quietly eats a shift's worth of output that an hourly count never reveals.
The free OEE tracker is built for exactly that. Log a shift in about two minutes, tag every stop with your own printing reason codes, and get a downtime Pareto that shows whether make-ready, web breaks, or colour changeovers are costing you the most. It doubles as a light CMMS, with a work order board, a preventive maintenance schedule, and an asset register for your presses and converting kit, and none of it needs an account or an install.
Start with the tracker to get honest numbers on the table. If you want to see how those stops roll into availability, performance, and quality, read what is OEE, and to size the prize, work through the cost of downtime. When a pressroom is ready to catch the fast losses automatically and close the loop from a detected stop to a work order, that is where Fabrico comes in.
What you get, free
Two-minute shift logging
Log run time, stops, scrap, and good count for a press shift in about two minutes. Set your own downtime reason codes for what hits printing hardest: plate change, make-ready, blanket or anilox wash, colour changeover, web break, register fault, and die-cut jam.
Instant OEE and downtime Pareto
The moment you save a shift you get availability, performance, and quality, plus a downtime Pareto that ranks make-ready, short stops, and scrap so you know which loss to chase first instead of guessing.
Work order board
When a log turns up a press that keeps losing register or a laminator that keeps breaking the web, raise a work order right on the board, assign it, and track it through to done. It is a light CMMS that lives next to your OEE.
PM schedule and asset register
Keep a register of presses, laminators, slitters, die-cutters, and folders with preventive maintenance schedules attached, so blanket changes, roller checks, and anilox cleaning do not slip between jobs.
Per-machine breakdown and benchmark
Break OEE down by machine to compare a flexo line against a digital press or a finishing station, and see every shift measured against the widely used 85% world-class OEE figure so you can track the gap over time.
Export, backup, and printable reports
Export everything to CSV or JSON, back up and restore your data as a single file, print a PDF report for a shift review, and share a scorecard with a line lead or plant manager. Your data stays in your browser on your device.
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 shift by hand in about two minutes, including plate changes and make-ready blocks, with data kept in your browser. | Reads OEE automatically off your press and converting PLCs, so there is no manual entry. |
| Micro-stop cause | You investigate web breaks, register kicks, and colour drift yourself and note the reason. | Computer vision identifies the true cause of each micro-stop with video evidence, the fast failure mode that dominates pressrooms. |
| Loss-to-fix loop | You spot the recurring register fault or web-break pattern, then raise the work order yourself on the board. | A detected loss becomes an auto-routed work order, assigned automatically to the right technician. |
| Make-ready and scrap | Log start-up and colour-match scrap against your good count so make-ready waste shows up in the quality score. | Ties each quality loss back to the machine event that caused it, with video evidence of the run. |
| Scope and multi-site | One plant on one device and browser, best for a single press or shift. | Runs plant-wide and across multiple sites from one central view, useful once you run several presses or plants. |
| Integrations | Standalone, run it on its own and export data when you need it elsewhere. | Connects to your press and converting PLCs to close the loop from a detected stop to a work order. |
| Access and roles | Local device sign-in with people and roles held on that one device. | Organisation SSO with roles across the plant and a full audit trail that supports audit-readiness. |
| Data residency | Data stays local in your browser, on the device you use, nothing leaves it. | EU-built with EU data residency and ISO 27001, 20000-1, and 9001 certification, which supports audit-readiness. |
| Reporting | Instant OEE, a downtime Pareto, per-machine breakdown, and CSV or JSON export you run yourself. | Live plant-wide dashboards plus scheduled reports delivered automatically. |
Frequently asked questions
Is the OEE Lab tracker really free for a print shop?
Yes. Open the free OEE tracker and start logging shifts with no signup and no account. Your data stays in your browser on the device you use, and you can export to CSV or JSON any time.
How do I quantify make-ready and plate changes?
Set plate change, make-ready, colour changeover, and blanket wash as your own downtime reason codes, then log every stop against them per job. The downtime Pareto then shows the true make-ready cost that an hourly count hides, split cleanly from your run time.
Can it separate web-break downtime from colour-match scrap?
Yes. Log the web-break minutes as downtime and the start-up or colour-match scrap against your good count, and the tracker splits the availability loss from the quality loss so you can see which side of a changeover is costing you more.
What is a good OEE benchmark for a printing or label line?
The free tracker measures every shift against the widely used 85% world-class OEE figure. High-speed presses and converting lines often sit well below that once plate changes, colour changeovers, and sub-five-minute web breaks are counted honestly.
Does it work as a light CMMS for the pressroom, not just OEE?
Yes. Alongside OEE it gives you a work order board, a preventive maintenance schedule, and an asset register for presses, laminators, and die-cutters, so routine maintenance and breakdown fixes live in the same place as your loss data.
When do I need more than the free tracker?
Once manual shift entry becomes the bottleneck across several presses, or you keep re-investigating the same web-break and register faults shift after shift, it is time to look at automatic capture. That is the point to book a Fabrico demo and see PLC-read OEE with computer-vision true-cause and auto-routed work orders.
When free is not enough, Fabrico is the upgrade
The free tracker gets a pressroom honest numbers fast, but the losses that dominate printing and label work, frequent sub-five-minute web breaks, register kicks, plate changes, and colour changeovers, are exactly the ones that are hardest to catch by hand at press speed, shift after shift. Fabrico reads OEE automatically off your press and converting PLCs, uses computer vision to pin down the true cause of each micro-stop with video evidence, and closes the loop by auto-routing a work order the moment a fault pattern repeats. It runs plant-wide and across sites, is built and hosted in the EU with EU data residency, and is ISO 27001, 20000-1, and 9001 certified, which supports audit-readiness. When manual logging stops keeping up with the number of presses you run, book a Fabrico demo and see the automated version of everything the free tracker does by hand.
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