# OEE, end to end

## The use case

**Track OEE across three production lines.** OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) tells you how much good product a line makes versus its full potential — one live number per line, plus history for trends.

**What "good" looks like** — every line shows a live OEE figure the team trusts, and any line's OEE can be charted back over weeks to spot drift.

It's not one app. OEE takes **two apps** — one at the edge, one in the cloud — joined by **two shared services** (a broker and a history store).

## The apps

### 1 · OEE - Edge Aggregator

**What it does** — Reads the machine signals on a line and publishes the line's state.

- **Delivery method** — [whole app](/docs/application-guide/app-delivery-methods/): promoted as a snapshot through a pipeline to a Remote Instance on every line.
- **App pattern** — [hardware app · Configurable App](/docs/application-guide/app-delivery-methods/hardware-apps/): the same build everywhere, with each line's PLC tag names loaded as per-site config.
- **Runs on** — a Remote Instance, one per line.
- **Why this shape** — the same flows run on every line, right next to the equipment, and keep working if the link drops — but each line's PLC tags differ, so the values are configured per install. Build it once; roll the same version to the whole fleet and point each at its own tags.
- **See the flow** — [how OEE - Edge Aggregator is built in Node-RED →](/docs/node-red-guide/worked-examples/oee-edge-aggregator/)

### 2 · OEE - Central Dashboard

**What it does** — Subscribes to the line states, computes availability, performance and quality, and presents the live OEE dashboard.

- **Delivery method** — [whole app](/docs/application-guide/app-delivery-methods/): promoted dev → staging → prod as one versioned build.
- **App pattern** — [software app · Data-Driven App](/docs/application-guide/app-delivery-methods/software-apps/).
- **Runs on** — a Hosted Instance in the cloud.
- **Why this shape** — it's a user-facing app driven by live data, with no hardware of its own; one instance serves the whole plant.
- **See the flow** — [how OEE - Central Dashboard is built in Node-RED →](/docs/node-red-guide/worked-examples/oee-central-dashboard/)

### Shared services

- **Team Broker (MQTT · UNS)** — carries line state from edge to cloud. The edge publishes to a topic; the dashboard subscribes. Neither references the other.
- **External time-series DB (Timescale / QuestDB)** — FlowFuse has no built-in time-series store, so history goes to an external DB over the Postgres wire protocol — a second egress, because the data is a timestamped stream.

## The full architecture

<arch-diagram :edges="[{"from":"lineA","to":"broker","dashed":true,"accent":"teal"},{"from":"lineB","to":"broker","label":"publish state","dashed":true,"accent":"teal"},{"from":"lineC","to":"broker","dashed":true,"accent":"teal"},{"from":"broker","to":"hosted","label":"subscribe","dashed":true,"accent":"teal"},{"from":"hosted","to":"tsdb","label":"writes history · Postgres wire","accent":"slate"}]" :groups="[{"id":"cloud","label":"Cloud · platform — the app + history","accent":"blue","nodes":["hosted","tsdb"]},{"id":"edge","label":"OT · edge — one Remote Instance per line, all the same Edge Aggregator","accent":"red","nodes":["lineA","lineB","lineC"]}]" :legend="[{"swatch":"red","label":"OT edge"},{"swatch":"blue","label":"Cloud"},{"line":"teal","dashed":true,"label":"MQTT / UNS"},{"line":"slate","label":"Postgres wire"}]" :nodes="[{"id":"hosted","label":"Hosted Instance","sub":"OEE · Central Dashboard","accent":"indigo","col":2,"row":1},{"id":"tsdb","label":"Time-series DB","sub":"external · history","accent":"slate","col":3,"row":1},{"id":"broker","label":"Team Broker","sub":"MQTT · UNS","accent":"teal","col":2,"row":2},{"id":"lineA","label":"Remote Instance","sub":"Line A · Edge Aggregator","accent":"slate","col":1,"row":3},{"id":"lineB","label":"Remote Instance","sub":"Line B · Edge Aggregator","accent":"slate","col":2,"row":3},{"id":"lineC","label":"Remote Instance","sub":"Line C · Edge Aggregator","accent":"slate","col":3,"row":3}]">



</arch-diagram>

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**The architecture, in one sentence** — OEE is the **Edge Aggregator** (a hardware Configurable App, on a Remote Instance per line) publishing machine state over the Team Broker to the **Central Dashboard** (a software Data-Driven App, on a Hosted Instance), which computes and displays OEE and writes history to an external time-series DB.

</callout>