Dictionary · OEE component
Availability
Availability is the first OEE component: actual run time divided by scheduled production time. Breakdowns, changeovers and waiting on materials all live here — every minute the line was supposed to run and didn't.
Availability = Actual run time ÷ Scheduled time
Nakajima's world-class floor for Availability is 90% or better. The definition's teeth are in the word scheduled: planned maintenance windows are excluded, but every unplanned stop — however short, however explainable — counts against you.
Sources: Nakajima (1988) · ISO 22400-2:2014
Reading it on the floor
First lever
Changeover loss is the largest Availability lever on most SME lines — and it responds to method (SMED), not capital. Rank your stops by minutes per week before buying anything.
Common misreading
Availability is not utilization. Utilization compares run time to calendar time (that's TEEP territory); Availability compares it to scheduled time. The quiet failure: quietly shrinking “scheduled time” until Availability looks great while the plant sits idle.
What good looks like
≥90% (Nakajima's component floor for world-class OEE). Below that, the multiplication makes 85% OEE arithmetically impossible no matter how good the other two rates are.
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