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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Shop Floor and Maintenance

Utilization

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

/ˌjuːtələˈzeɪʃən/nounCommon term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, utilization means: The percentage of available time that a machine, person or plant is actually busy working.

In Turkish: kullanım oranı, kapasite kullanım oranı, doluluk oranı

How it is used

Used in capacity planning and cost discussions. Plants report capacity utilization, and managers like high machine utilization. Lean warns that running every machine flat out without demand only builds inventory, and queueing theory shows that waiting times grow fast as utilization nears 100%.

Example sentences

  1. Utilization of the CNC machines is only 55% because of the long setups.

  2. Capacity utilization in the industry fell to 74% this quarter.

Common collocations

  • capacity utilization
  • machine utilization
  • high utilization
  • utilization rate
  • capacityThe maximum amount a machine, line or plant can produce in a given time, for example 1,200 units per shift.
  • OEEShort for overall equipment effectiveness: a percentage that shows how well a machine is used, calculated as availability × performance × quality.
  • queueing theoryThe mathematical study of waiting lines: how arrivals, service times and the number of servers affect queue length and waiting time.
  • 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.

More terms: Shop Floor and Maintenance

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