Getting to the Root Cause of Equipment Outages With Machine Downtime Tracking

According to one recent study, across the entire manufacturing industry the average cost of downtime is roughly $260,000 per hour. Obviously, smaller organizations will experience fewer losses, but when you look at a figure like that relative to the size of your operations it's still a major challenge that must be addressed.

The issue that some people run into with downtime is that they take the event itself far too literally. A machine goes offline, typically in an unplanned capacity - "that's bad." Then, they're able to perform maintenance to get the equipment back up and running again - "that's good." Sometimes, analysis of what is really happening doesn't extend much beyond those core concepts.

Shining a New Light on Downtime

But when you drill down a bit further, you begin to realize that one of the biggest contributing factors to unplanned downtime incidents is actually inefficient maintenance. This is especially true of manufacturing operations that still use reactive, "break/fix" maintenance processes. They wait for a problem to crop up so that they can solve it rather than working proactively to prevent the problem from happening at all.

Not only that, but remember that you're paying your maintenance crews to essentially follow ineffective processes. This isn't their fault - this is likely what you've given them the resources to do. So not only are you paying for the inadequate maintenance, but you're paying for the downtime-related issues that happen as a result. Now you can begin to see how the average cost of unplanned downtime can climb so high.

All this is to say that you need to see downtime as the proverbial two-headed monster it is. One part of the issue is the downtime itself, but the second is whatever actually contributed to it. In order to permanently kill the beast, you need to cut off both of the heads - not just one.

That's what equipment downtime tracking allows you to do. Yes, solutions like Thrive have built-in alerts so that you can instantly learn when issues arise and snap into action. In a situation where literally every second counts, being instantly alerted to a problem can help you start saving money right up front.

But through analytics and historical data, downtime tracking can also help you get to the bottom of the recurring issues that you're having. You don't just see what types of problems occur - you see why. You get to peek into what was happening just before they occurred so that you're in a better position to recognize those conditions in the future. It's an opportunity to enact meaningful, long-lasting change across your entire operations and for many organizations it's one that could not have come along at a better time.

If you'd like to find out more information about why it's so crucial to understand and address the true cause of equipment outages, or if you have any additional questions about what an innovative approach to tracking machine downtime can do for your business, please don't delay - contact the team at Thrive today.