Availability guarantees and physical assets management: empirical evidence of the impact of some underlying factors

The significance of machinery´s availability performance has increased because of the harder competition in many industrial branches. This trend has caused a demand for higher reliability and a request for availability performance guarantees when acquiring new production equipment. In the competitive environment both the buyer and the supplier has to control risk they meet. Availability guarantee is one of the tools for a buyer to control risk. At the same time it creates a new risk to the supplier. However, the significance of availability (e.g. OEE (overall equipment effectiveness)) depends on business requirements met by a company and it varies branch-wise and plant-wise. Availability performance and the costs of availability, e.g. maintenance costs, are influenced by factors such as production technology, which is in the short run exogenous