How Inactive Pitches Affect OEE and Uptime

Last updated: November 4, 2026

Overview

Whether a pitch is active or inactive changes which time counts toward OA (Uptime %) and OEE. This explains why OEE can change when you inactivate a pitch that had no production.

Active pitches

An active pitch counts as planned production time. Every active pitch with recorded actuals, scrap, or downtime contributes to your metrics.

Example: An active hour with 0 actual, 0 target, and 60 minutes of downtime is an hour with 0% availability and no production. It lowers the line's Uptime % and OEE %.

Inactive pitches

An inactive pitch is treated as time the line wasn't scheduled to run. L2L removes it from the OEE calculation completely, including its planned time and any downtime logged against it.

Why does site-level OEE go up when I inactivate a pitch with no production?

At site or line level, OEE is calculated across all active pitches. Removing a pitch that had only downtime gives more weight to the remaining active pitches, so OA and OEE rise.

Example:

Line A has two pitches, each with 60 minutes of downtime.
Line B has two pitches with no downtime and recorded actuals.
Site-level OA for those two hours is 50%: 120 of 240 minutes are down.
Inactivate one of Line A's downtime pitches and only three pitches are counted. OA rises to 66.67% and OEE rises too.

When to inactivate a pitch

Situation	What to do
The line wasn't meant to run (no crew, no orders, planned shutdown)	Inactivate the pitch. The hour never belonged in OEE, so the higher number is more accurate.
The line was meant to run but was down (breakdown, waiting on material, equipment issue)	Leave the pitch active with its downtime. Inactivating it hides a real loss and makes OEE look better than it is.

Caution: Inactivating a pitch clears its production data. Don't inactivate pitches that have actuals. (If your actuals come in via API; they can be retrieved).

Troubleshooting Pitch Schedule Issues in L2L
Production: Pitch Schedule Templates