Industrial manufacturing

Which downtime actually costs you money?

Not all downtime is equal. Chasing the wrong stoppages is how maintenance budgets grow while output does not.

June 20264 min read

Why fixing comes after measuring

It is tempting to point predictive maintenance at the loudest breakdown. But a stoppage on a non-bottleneck line costs far less than a short, frequent micro-stop on the constraint. Without measuring losses first, effort goes to the visible problem, not the expensive one.

Instrument the losses, in one language

The frame is overall equipment effectiveness, availability times performance times quality, broken into its loss buckets so you can see whether the money is in breakdowns, speed, or scrap. The reliability discipline behind it is documented by bodies like the SMRP, and it is what tells you where a fix actually pays.

Where the ERP closes the loop

On Hudace, OEE and its losses sit on the same platform as work orders and cost, so a loss is tied to the money it represents, not just a percentage on a board. Xenon AI ranks the downtime by cost and recommends where to start, and a maintenance lead chooses the programme.

The numbers to watch

Measure the losses before committing the maintenance budget.

OEE

Availability x Performance x Quality. The frame that separates expensive downtime from cheap.

Availability loss

Time lost to breakdowns and changeovers. One of three buckets, not the whole story.

Performance loss

Output lost to micro-stops and slow running. Often the hidden cost on the constraint.

Cost of downtime

Lost margin per hour of stoppage, by line. The number that should rank the work.

See where downtime costs on Hudace

Talk to our team about tying OEE losses to cost on one platform.

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