The Strategic Importance of Plant Reliability (GFT-663A)

It is often misunderstood that effective reliability management of a manufacturing plant is merely a process of performing maintenance better. It is much more than that. In a manufacturing enterprise two important Key Performance Indices are used – one for the production side, called Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), and the other on the enterprise side, called Overall Management Effectiveness (OME). Both of these key indices have a direct dependency on an attribute called Plant Reliability. For purposes of clarity, by Plant Reliability we mean the overall reliability of the production assets in the shop floor. In a shop floor production flow line, Plant Reliability is determined by the measures of reliability of the individual assets. The asset that has the maximum failure rate becomes the weakest link. As a result of a single asset or a group of assets not being very reliable, it is quite possible that the overall Plant Reliability can be adversely impacted – and more importantly, the return on the investment and profitability as well get impacted along with it.