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Explorer User Guide

Reading and filtering your OEE dashboards

Explorer turns your Vorne production data into a set of ready-to-use OEE dashboards. Most of what you click - the charts, the filter bar, exporting - is standard Apache Superset, which is powerful and well documented. So this guide focuses on what is specific to Explorer: how our filters are set up, how the dashboard tabs work, and a handful of things that are not obvious the first time through.

Download PDF Updated August 15, 2026

Getting around

Open Explorer and you land on a list of dashboards grouped by topic - an Executive Summary, OEE Deep Dive, and focused dashboards for Downtime, Quality, Availability, Performance, and more. Pick one and every dashboard shares the same three-part layout:

  1. A filter bar down the left, pre-built for Vorne data.
  2. A row of KPI cards pinned across the top.
  3. Tabs of charts below, which change as you switch tabs.
A typical Explorer dashboard - filter bar (left), KPI band (top), tabbed charts (below).

Filtering your data

Every dashboard has a filter bar down the left side, pre-built for Vorne data. Top to bottom: a Date time range, a Device picker, the Vorne metric filters (Shift, Part, Job, State, Reason Code), and below the Hierarchy - Data Collector divider, your plant hierarchy (Enterprise, Plant, Area, Location, Type, Line). At the bottom is Trend roll-up. Pick your values, then press Apply to update the dashboard, or Clear all to reset to defaults.

The Explorer filter bar, pre-built for Vorne data.

Device defaults to your first device, not "all"

When a dashboard first loads, Device selects a single device - the first one in your list - not your whole plant, because rolling every device into one OEE number is rarely meaningful. If a dashboard looks like it is only showing one machine, that is why; widen the Device filter to compare more. (The Executive Summary is the exception - it rolls up all devices for the year.)

On the analysis dashboards (Quality, Performance & Cycle Time, and the Analysis set) the hierarchy filters cascade: choose a Plant and the Device list narrows to that plant's devices. Your selections also stay applied as you switch tabs within a dashboard - but each dashboard keeps its own filter state, so opening a different dashboard starts fresh with that dashboard's defaults.

Trend roll-up vs. the date range

These two are independent. Date time sets how far back you are looking; Trend roll-up sets how the trend charts bucket that window - Daily for shift-level detail, Weekly or Monthly when you zoom out for a management view. Changing the roll-up re-buckets the trend lines without changing the date window.

Working with dashboard tabs

The tabs inside a dashboard are how you drill in - you switch tabs rather than navigating to a separate dashboard. There are two tab patterns, and knowing which one you are looking at avoids confusion:

Tabs as a breakdown dimension. On most dashboards (Downtime, Quality, Labor, and similar), the tabs are Main, Device, Shift, Plant, Job, Part, Team, Type, Area, Location, Enterprise. Each tab re-cuts the same metric by that dimension - so on Downtime, the Shift tab shows downtime broken out by shift, the Device tab by device, and so on. Main shows the headline view.

Downtime, "Shift" tab - the same downtime metric, broken out by shift.

Tabs as a metric. On the category dashboards (Shift Analysis, Job Analysis, Part Analysis, Plant & Hierarchy), the dashboard is fixed to one dimension and the tabs are Main, OEE, Availability, Performance, Quality, Downtime - each tab swaps which metric you are viewing for that dimension.

Shift Analysis, "OEE" tab - one dimension (shift), with the metric chosen by the tab.

The KPI cards stay put

The row of KPI cards sits above the tabs, so it stays visible as you switch tabs underneath. The tabs change the detail charts; the headline numbers up top do not move.

Reading the charts

A few chart conventions show up across Explorer:

KPI cards are trend KPIs. Each big number has a small sparkline underneath it - that is the metric over your selected date range, so you see the trend, not just the latest figure.

Most tabs follow a bar / trend / table pattern. A bar chart ranks the breakdown (for example, downtime by reason), a trend line shows it over time, and a detail table gives the exact numbers with inline bars for quick scanning. Tables roll up repeated categories and let you sort by any column.

To slice the data, use the filter bar on the left or switch tabs - that is how you move between dimensions and time windows. Standard Superset chart controls are available too: hover a series for a tooltip, toggle items in the legend, and use the chart's "..." menu to view the query, go fullscreen, or export to CSV/Excel.

Targets on your charts

A target is the number your plant is held to for a metric - 85% OEE, 90% availability, a reject rate under 2%. You set each one once for the whole company in Configurator, and any chart you point at it draws a dashed line at the target and colours its bars green where they meet it and red where they miss.

1. Set the target

In Configurator, open Metric Targets. Eight metrics are listed: OEE, Availability, Performance, Quality, TEEP, Utilization, Percent Reject and Percent Down. Open the actions menu at the end of a metric's row and choose Edit; the row turns into inputs. Set two things:

  • Target - the number, as a percentage. 85 means 85%.
  • Direction - Higher is better for OEE, availability, performance, quality, TEEP and utilization; Lower is better for reject rate and downtime.

Then press Save. Nothing is stored until you do.

OEE, Availability, Performance and Quality arrive already set to the industry world-class figures - 85, 90, 95 and 99.9. The other four arrive with no number, because there is no industry figure to borrow: fill them in with the ones your plant is actually held to.

Configurator's Metric Targets screen. One row per metric, the four OEE metrics already set to the world-class figures, and the rest reading "No target" until you fill them in.

"No target" is not a target of zero

Clear the Target field and the metric has no target, which is not the same as a target of 0. A metric with no target draws no line and leaves its bars in the ordinary chart colour - a missing target is never treated as a miss.

2. Point a chart at it

Targets reach charts through their own dataset, which carries every target beside your production data: v_summary_device_shift_hierarchy. Create a Target Bar chart on it, and on the Data tab set five things:

  • Category columns - what each bar is. device_name for a chart by machine, shift by shift, calendar_day for a day-by-day view.
  • Metrics - what you are measuring. Pick the percentage metric that matches the target you are about to use: OEE %, Availability %, Performance %, Quality %, TEEP %, Utilization %, Reject % or Downtime %.
  • Target source - Per-row target from this query.
  • Target column - the target column named after your metric: oee_target, availability_target, performance_target, quality_target, teep_target, utilization_target, percent_reject_target or percent_down_target.
  • Target direction column - the matching ..._target_direction column, for example oee_target_direction. This is what carries "higher is better" or "lower is better" from Configurator, so the chart colours correctly without you telling it which way round the metric runs.

Then press Update chart. Changing these controls does not redraw the chart on its own - until you do, you are still looking at the previous query.

A Target Bar chart reading OEE against the company-wide target. The 85 is not typed into the chart - it comes from the target column, which Configurator fills in.

You do not set the direction per chart

Reject rate and downtime are good when they are low, and OEE is good when it is high. That belongs to the metric, not to the chart, so you set it once in Configurator and the Target direction column above carries it onto every chart.

There is still a Target direction control on the Customize tab. While the target comes from the query it is only a fallback, for rows whose direction column is empty or unreadable, so you can leave it alone. It matters again if you override the target on one chart, which is step 3.

Change the number in Configurator and every chart pointed at that target moves with it on the next refresh.

3. Overriding it on one chart

One chart sometimes needs its own number - a line being commissioned, a trial run, a stretch goal for one crew. Set Target source to Fixed target and type the number into Fixed target value. That chart uses your number; every other chart keeps the company target.

A fixed target has no direction column to read, so this is the one case where you do set Target direction on the Customize tab. For Reject % or Downtime %, set it to Lower is better, or the chart will colour as though more is better and every bar will be the wrong colour.

The same chart with a chart-level target of 62 - green meets it, red misses it, and the dashed line marks it.

If the targets dataset is not in your list

Add it once, the same way as any Superset dataset: Datasets, then + Dataset, with database oeeintellisuite, schema public and table v_summary_device_shift_hierarchy.

Light and dark

Explorer renders cleanly in both light and dark. The same dashboard, two looks - use whichever suits your screen and lighting.

The dashboards at a glance

Explorer ships a curated set of dashboards. Here is what each one is for - open any of them in the screenshot gallery to see it full size.

Exporting and sharing

These are standard Superset features, worth knowing:

  • Export data - a chart's "..." menu exports the underlying data to CSV or Excel.
  • Fullscreen - open a single chart or the whole dashboard fullscreen for a clean view on a shop-floor monitor.
  • Share a link - the dashboard URL carries your current filters, so a link reopens the same view for a colleague.

Tips and gotchas

Quick reference

  • Seeing one machine? Device defaults to your first device, not all - widen the Device filter.
  • Numbers look short? Check the Date time range; operational dashboards default to the last week, the Executive Summary to the current year.
  • Trend charts too coarse or too fine? Adjust Trend roll-up (Daily / Weekly / Monthly) - it is separate from the date range.
  • Filters reset when you opened another dashboard? That is expected
    • filters are per dashboard. They do carry across tabs within a dashboard.
  • Switching tabs, not dashboards, is how you drill into a different shift, device, or metric.
  • Target line missing or bars all one colour? The metric has no target set in Configurator, or the chart's Target column does not match the metric you charted.
  • Colours the wrong way round on reject rate or downtime? On a per-row target, the chart has no Target direction column. On a fixed target there is no such column to set, so Target direction on the Customize tab has to say Lower is better.