Alerts
OpenMES Alerts are like a smart alarm system for your factory. They watch your machines, production lines, stock levels, and maintenance plans around the clock. When something goes wrong, the right people get notified instantly – so problems get fixed fast and you avoid expensive downtime.
What Are Alerts
Alerts are automatic notifications. They pop up when a value goes above or below a limit you set, or when a deadline passes. You do not have to keep checking dashboards yourself – alerts come to you. Each alert shows when it happened, how urgent it is, what caused it, and a short description.
The goal is to spot problems faster. Without alerts, a machine running too hot might go unnoticed for an entire shift. That could ruin a whole batch of products. With alerts, you get a notification within seconds – so someone can step in before damage is done.
Every alert is saved in the database. This gives you a searchable history you can use to find the root cause of problems, track improvements over time, and show proof during audits. Quality teams can check that issues were handled properly. Improvement teams can look for patterns in recurring alerts.
A health inspector visits a medicine packaging factory. She wants proof that overheating on the sealing machine was caught and fixed quickly. The quality manager opens the Alerts history, filters by the machine name and alert type, and shows a full log. Every temperature problem was detected within 30 seconds and handled within 5 minutes – the audit passes with no issues.
Alert Types
OpenMES has five alert types. Each one watches for a different kind of problem. Knowing what they do helps you set up the system for your factory.
Machine Threshold Alerts
These alerts go off when a sensor reading from a machine goes too high or too low. Think of things like temperature, pressure, vibration, speed, or power usage. They help you catch equipment problems before they cause defects or breakdowns. For example, if a machine starts vibrating too much, it might mean a part inside is wearing out. Catching it early means a quick, planned repair instead of a sudden breakdown that stops production for days.
OEE Drop Alerts
OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness – it is a score that shows how well a production line is performing. These alerts fire when that score drops below a level you set. Instead of finding out at the end of a shift that a line only ran at 55%, you get notified within minutes. The alert also tells you why the score dropped – whether machines were stopped too long (Availability), running too slowly (Performance), or making too many rejects (Quality). This points you to the right fix.
Overdue Order Alerts
These alerts appear when a work order misses its deadline. They help you keep delivery promises and spot where production is getting stuck. Each alert shows the order number, customer name, product, how many days late it is, and how much is still left to produce. With this info, planners can rearrange the schedule, add more resources, or let the customer know about a new delivery date.
Maintenance Past Due Alerts
Regular maintenance keeps machines running well. Skipping it leads to surprise breakdowns and faster wear. These alerts fire when a planned maintenance task passes its due date without being done. The alert shows which machine, what task, the original due date, and how many days late it is. This makes sure no maintenance job gets forgotten – especially in big factories with hundreds of machines.
Stock Below Minimum Alerts
These alerts tell your purchasing and production teams when a material drops below its minimum safe level. Each alert shows the material name and code, how much is left, the minimum limit, and roughly how many days of supply remain. The worst kind of downtime is when production stops because you ran out of something. These alerts catch low stock early, so you can reorder at normal prices instead of paying extra for rush deliveries.
A metal stamping factory gets three alerts on Monday morning: an OEE drop on Press Line 1, overdue maintenance on the same press, and low steel coil stock for that line. The maintenance team checks the press and finds a slow oil leak causing uneven pressure – that explains the OEE drop. They fix the leak, complete the overdue maintenance, and purchasing rushes a steel coil delivery. All three alerts are resolved by lunchtime.
Alert Feed UI
The Alert Feed is the main screen where you see and manage all alerts. The newest alerts appear at the top. Each row shows four things:
| Column | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Timestamp | When the alert happened | 2026-08-26 06:42:17 |
| Severity | A colored label showing urgency: Critical (red), Warning (amber), Info (blue) | Critical |
| Source | What caused the alert – a machine, line, order, or material | Press Line 1 / Hydraulic Sensor |
| Description | A short explanation of what went wrong and the limit values | Hydraulic pressure dropped below 150 bar (limit: 180 bar) |
You can filter alerts by type, urgency, source, date range, and whether they have been acknowledged. You can combine filters too – for example, show only unacknowledged Critical alerts from the last 24 hours. A search bar lets you search alert descriptions to find specific events quickly.
The top bar always shows a count of unresolved alerts, no matter which page you are on. This way, important alerts never get missed – even during busy shifts when you are working in other parts of the system.
At a bottling plant, the outgoing supervisor opens the Alert Feed and filters for the last 8 hours. She shows the incoming supervisor three unacknowledged warnings: a small temperature change on Pasteurizer 2 (already back to normal), a low ink warning on the label printer (reorder placed), and an OEE dip on Line 5 from a changeover that took too long. The incoming supervisor acknowledges each alert and adds notes about what was discussed.
Acknowledging & Resolving Alerts
Alerts go through two steps: acknowledging and resolving. A new alert starts as "Active" and stays visible in the feed. When someone clicks the acknowledge button, the system records who did it and when. This tells the team that someone knows about the problem and is working on it. The alert stays visible until it is resolved.
Resolving is the second step. Once the problem is actually fixed – the machine is repaired, stock is refilled, or the late order is finished – you mark the alert as resolved. You can also add a note explaining what happened and how it was fixed. These notes build up a knowledge base that helps solve similar problems faster in the future.
If nobody acknowledges an alert within a set time, it can automatically be sent to a higher-level manager (like the plant manager). This makes sure serious problems are never ignored – especially during nights or weekends when fewer people are on duty.
Alert Configuration
You can customize every alert type in the Settings module. You choose the limits, urgency levels, how people get notified, who gets notified, and when alerts should be passed up to a manager. This way, you only get alerts that matter to your factory – not a flood of useless notifications that everyone starts ignoring.
For machine alerts, you pick which reading to watch, set upper and lower limits, choose how long a reading must stay out of range before triggering (to avoid false alarms from brief spikes), and set the urgency level. For OEE alerts, you set the minimum acceptable score and the time window (for example, alert if OEE drops below 65% over 30 minutes). Overdue order and maintenance alerts trigger automatically based on due dates.
A good tip: start with higher limits that only catch serious problems. Then tighten them over time as your team gets used to the system. If you send hundreds of minor alerts per shift, people will start ignoring them all. Focus on alerts where someone can actually do something. If no action is possible, it should be a log entry, not a notification.
Review your alert settings every few months. As your processes improve and recurring problems get fixed, your limits may need updating. An alert that was important when you first set things up may no longer be needed – and something that was stable before may need watching as equipment gets older.