Findings – A case study showed an improvement of the availability in one machine from 58.5 to 60.2
percent. This single alteration with a minimum of investment resulted in a 3 percent increase of the
overall output in the manufacturing system consisting of 11 numerically controlled machines and six
other stations. A new simulation run was performed one year after the first study in order to see how
the improvement work has progressed with the suggested method. The method resulted in an increase
of 6 percent in overall output.