The first part tells a story about a fictitious company, and illustrates the importance of using a robust measure of plant and equipment performance to inform business decisions.

The conclusion to the story is that the MD is about to buy a costly new machine, while unaware that his existing machinery is operating at only 30% of its true potential. In short, he is about to waste a lot of money.

The purpose of the story is to illustrate how the MD and his team could gain insight into this issue by adopting a measure called Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), which is used by many of the world's best manufacturing companies.