Glossary · Manufacturing systems
Availability loss
Also known as: Downtime loss
German: Verfügbarkeitsverlust
In OEE analysis, availability loss is the share of planned production time lost because equipment is not running, for example due to breakdowns, changeovers, material shortages or waiting.
- Manufacturing systems
In one sentence
Availability loss is the planned production time lost because equipment is stopped, for example by breakdowns or changeovers.
Example
In an eight-hour shift, a 50-minute changeover and a 30-minute motor failure cause an availability loss of 80 minutes.
How it applies
- Operation: Availability losses are captured by recording stop times and reasons, automatically from machine states or manually by operators. Reason codes must be clear and limited in number to be useful.
- Maintenance: Breakdowns point to maintenance issues; Predictive maintenance and better Corrective maintenance procedures reduce them. Changeover losses are reduced with methods such as SMED.
- Analysis: Whether planned maintenance or breaks count as availability loss depends on how planned production time is defined; companies must define this consistently.
- Documentation: Document the stop reason catalog, the definition of planned production time and how machine states map to reasons. Otherwise OEE figures from different lines can't be compared.
Availability vs. performance loss
Availability loss means the machine stands still. Performance loss means it runs, but slower than its ideal rate, including short stops that are not recorded as downtime.