The way OA is used is not for comparing performance or any type of individual reward or punishment system. It is used for improvement. The overall performance board for the plant shows OA by shift. This then is tied to department boards and even drills down to hourly OA. Every hour OA is examined and comments are written about the reason for any downtime for a specific machine. Most of the problems are unique, one of a kind and lead to immediate countermeasures by maintenance. Recurring items go onto a tracking sheet and follow a more rigorous problem-solving process to get to the root cause.