Metrics & analysis

What is Availability?

Availability is OEE’s first factor: the share of the planned production time in which the equipment is actually running. Availability = running time ÷ planned production time. Losses: breakdowns, changeovers and other stops.

The boundary matters: breaks and planned maintenance can be kept outside planned time, but the definition must be fixed and honest — move losses out of the denominator and OEE rises on paper, while the real capacity is unchanged.

Improving availability goes two ways: fewer stops (preventive maintenance, root-cause analysis on breakdowns) and shorter stops (SMED on changeovers, fast troubleshooting).

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Related concepts

OEE

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) measures how large a share of the planned production time actually produces good parts. OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality. World class is reckoned at ≈ 85%; typical unoptimised plants sit around 60% (Nakajima, 1988).

SMED

SMED is a method for systematically reducing changeover time — the time from the last good part of one product to the first good part of the next. The core move is to shift changeover work from internal time (the machine is idle) to external time (the machine is running).

TPM

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is a systematic approach to maximising equipment effectiveness by making maintenance a shared responsibility — operators perform daily basic maintenance (autonomous maintenance), while technicians focus on prevention and improvement.

From metric to your own numbers

A key figure only means something when it sits on your own operation. Calculate your OEE in two minutes and see where capacity is lost, and how much there is to gain.

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