1. Availability of production resources

Today's automated machines and production systems must offer and maintain exceptional levels of performance (output, precision, etc.), to which profitability must of course be added.

One of the ways of achieving these objectives would be to expect them to operate without failure.

Often, however, this performance has only been achieved by increasing the complexity of these means of production (tool changers, transfer and handling devices, measuring and control devices, etc.), which has as its corollary the multiplication of potential sources of failure, and therefore of production downtime, the consequences of which will be: reduced profitability, disruption of production organizations, customer dissatisfaction, etc.

Faced with this contradictory situation, it has become common for the future user of a piece of production...