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Overall labor effectiveness (OLE) calculator
Overall labor effectiveness (OLE) shows how well a crew's paid hours turn into good output. It is availability × performance × quality, applied to labor: hours not lost to idle time, output against the standard time per unit, and good units out of all units made. It is the people counterpart of OEE.
OLEequalsAvailability × Performance × Quality
AvailabilityequalsPaid hours − Idle hours divided by Paid hours
PerformanceequalsStandard minutes × Units made ÷ 60 divided by Hours worked
QualityequalsGood units divided by Units made
Scheduled hours, all people together
Waiting for material, no work, stoppages
Labor minutes the standard allows per unit
Good and bad
Right first time, no rework
Pre-filled with the worked example. Leave planned breaks out of the paid hours, or they will count as idle time.
Overall labor effectiveness
83.1%
6.65 of 8 paid hours went into good units at standard.
Availability
93.8%
Working hours ÷ paid hours
Performance
93.3%
Hours at standard ÷ working hours
Quality
95.0%
Good ÷ units made
How to calculate it
Five numbers from the shift report
Paid labor hours are the hours the crew was scheduled to work, all people added together. Take planned breaks out first, so the number reflects time the crew should have been producing.
Idle hours are the part of that time with no work to do: waiting for material, no orders, a stopped machine. Hours spent on work that was not standard, such as rework, stay in the worked hours and show up as lower performance.
Standard time is the labor minutes one unit should take, from your standard work or a time study. Units made and good units come from the count at the end of the shift.
Read the three factors, not just the product. Low availability is a flow problem the crew cannot fix alone, so it belongs on the daily management board; low performance is about method and training; low quality is about first pass yield.
Worked example
Illustrative numbers, not a benchmarkA crew on a shift with 8 paid hours, 0.5 hours of waiting for material, a standard of 3 labor minutes per unit, 140 units made and 133 of them good.
- 1Hours worked = 8 − 0.5 = 7.5 h. Availability = 7.5 ÷ 8 = 93.75%.
- 2Hours at standard = 3 min × 140 ÷ 60 = 7.0 h. Performance = 7.0 ÷ 7.5 = 93.33%.
- 3Quality = 133 ÷ 140 = 95%.
- 4OLE = 93.75% × 93.33% × 95% = 83.1%.
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<p style="font:13px/1.4 sans-serif"><a href="https://www.theleansuite.com/tools/ole-calculator">Overall labor effectiveness (OLE) calculator</a> by LeanSuite</p>How LeanSuite helps
LeanSuite's KPI Dashboards track OEE, downtime and production counts live, so the lost time and the counts behind an effectiveness figure are on one screen.
See KPI DashboardsFAQ
Overall labor effectiveness (OLE) calculator: common questions
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