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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Shop Floor and Maintenance

Throughput

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

/ˈθruːpʊt/nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, throughput means: The number of good units a process, line or plant actually produces in a period of time, such as parts per hour.

In Turkish: çıktı hızı, üretim hızı, birim zamandaki çıktı

How it is used

A key word in performance reviews and improvement projects. Teams increase, improve or measure throughput, and a bottleneck limits it. Capacity is what is possible; throughput is what really comes out.

Example sentences

  1. After the new fixture was installed, throughput went up from 85 to 110 parts per hour.

  2. The paint shop is the bottleneck, so it sets the throughput of the whole plant.

Common collocations

  • increase throughput
  • throughput rate
  • daily throughput
  • limit throughput
  • capacityThe maximum amount a machine, line or plant can produce in a given time, for example 1,200 units per shift.
  • bottleneckThe slowest step or resource in a process, which limits the output of the whole system, just as the neck of a bottle limits how fast liquid flows out.
  • cycle timeThe time it takes to complete one unit or one full round of a task at a machine or workstation, from start to finish.
  • OEEShort for overall equipment effectiveness: a percentage that shows how well a machine is used, calculated as availability × performance × quality.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Shop Floor and Maintenance

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