Availability & downtime
Availability is the share of your planned production time that the line was actually running. Downtime is what you lost. In most plants it's the single biggest drain on OEE, and it's the part Augos was built to see.
What it is
Of the three OEE factors, Availability is usually where the largest block of time disappears, because a single stop drags a chain of human response behind it before production resumes. Downtime splits cleanly into two kinds, and they behave very differently: the time you chose to stop, and the time that stopped you.
Planned downtime
Planned downtime is the time you deliberately take the line out of production, changeovers between products, cleaning and sanitation, scheduled maintenance, and breaks. It's necessary work, and none of it is waste the way a breakdown is. The trap is that "planned" quietly becomes "unquestioned": the window a changeover or a clean is given tends to be set once and then never challenged, so the stop is rarely as tight as the schedule assumes. That slack is real lost production, it just hides in plain sight, because it was on the plan and nobody logged it as a loss. Two distinct losses live inside every planned stop, and they matter because they have opposite fixes:
| Loss | What it is |
|---|---|
| Planning efficiency loss | Lives entirely in the allocated time, the window the plan grants a stop, measured against your own proven best. Allow 30 minutes for a changeover your best runs in 20 and the 10-minute gap is banked as "planned" loss. It is only about the plan itself; whatever the stop then actually runs, over or under, falls to operator compliance, not planning. |
| Operator discipline | The time difference between the allocated and the actual stop duration. A planned 30-minute changeover that runs 50 lands here, not in planning. Read it alongside Compliance to see both the time impact and how often the allocated duration is met. |
Separating the two matters: one is fixed by re-planning, the other by coaching. Rolled together, neither gets solved.
Unplanned downtime
Unplanned downtime is the time that stops you rather than the time you choose to stop, breakdowns, faults and jams, none of them on anyone's schedule. This is where the human response dominates, and where standard downtime reporting goes quiet: it records that the line stopped for forty minutes, but not that thirty-eight of those were people noticing, calling, waiting and diagnosing, and only two were the actual repair. To recover the time, you have to open the stop up.
The five phases of an unplanned stop
Augos decomposes every unplanned stop into five phases, and attributes each to the person or function who can recover it:
| Phase | What's happening | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Operator evaluation time | The time taken to assess the issue and request technical assistance. | Operator |
| Operator resolution time | The time the operator spends resolving the issue. | Operator |
| Technician response time | From the call for help to a technician at the machine. | Maintenance |
| Active wrench time | Hands-on repair. | Maintenance |
| Inactive wrench time | Repair stalled, waiting for a part, a permit, a second pair of hands. | Maintenance / supply |
Most of the recoverable time lives in the phases that aren't the wrench. That's the whole point: a forty-minute breakdown stops being one number and becomes five, each owned by someone who can shorten it.
Measuring downtime
The pulse sensor times every stop continuously, it never blinks, so the small and short stops that hand-logging misses are all counted. The operator terminal captures the human side: when help was called, when it was cleared. Because both are measured, every minute of downtime is classified as planned or unplanned and split into its phases, with nothing left as an unexplained lump.
Reporting on downtime
The downtime then surfaces through the reports, all reconciling to the same events: the Downtime Report is the raw event ledger, the Unplanned and Planned Stoppage analyses decompose the two kinds, and each lost stretch is priced as recoverable time against your own best.
Common questions
What's the difference between availability and downtime?
They're two sides of the same time. Availability is the share of planned production time the line was actually running; downtime is the time it wasn't. Recover lost time and availability rises.
Is planned downtime counted as a loss?
Not as waste the way a breakdown is, but the slack inside it is. A changeover given 30 minutes that only needs 20 banks 10 minutes of loss as "planned". Augos separates the planning slack from the operator discipline so each gets the right fix.
Why break a stop into five phases?
Because a single "40-minute breakdown" hides where the time went, usually a couple of minutes on the wrench wrapped in noticing, calling and waiting. Splitting it into five owned phases shows who can actually recover each stretch.
Do the short micro-stops get measured?
Yes. The pulse sensor times every stop continuously, so the short stops that hand-logging misses entirely are all counted rather than lost.