As the reliability of a corporation s plants improves, there is a measurable increase in the production of goods. When production increases, sales can increase, provided there is sufficient market for the goods produced. Reliability affects the production of goods in three distinct ways. First, if a plant is more reliable, it will be able to produce goods during a greater portion of each day, month, or year. This result is called availability and is expressed as a percentage by dividing hours available to produce by total hours available.
All plants have an inherent capacity to produce at a certain run rate.
With improvements in reliability, a plant will be able to run at a higher rate against its sustained rate. The calculation of rate is expressed in terms of the unit of finished product, in pounds, gallons, tons, or whatever measure is used for tracking production. For example, sustained capacity of a plant is 800,000 tons and the amount produced for the year is 760,000 tons. The third area of production affected by reliability is a measure called first-pass quality. First-pass quality is a measure of the amount of on specification product that is produced during the first pass through the production sequence.