One of the most important things to understand about downtime tracking software is that it is not the “be all, end all” solution that many think it is – at least, not on its own.
Yes, it’s valuable to get an automated alert whenever a critical piece of equipment goes offline. But if you don’t know why, meaning you also don’t know what to do about it, what value are you actually getting?
Therefore, if you really want to practice the most effective downtime tracking possible, you’ll want to keep a few key things in mind.
Getting to the Heart of All Those 1s and 0s
By far, one of the most important steps you can take to dive beneath your downtime tracking data involves making sure you understand exactly what it is that you’re tracking in the first place.
A downtime tracking solution like Thrive will allow you to separate events based on a number of different categories so that you see more than just when something is offline – you get visibility into why, all so that you can put yourself in the best possible position to do something about it.
An unplanned downtime event is one when a machine is not working as it should be because of some type of issue you didn’t predict. Obviously, this is different from a scheduled period of downtime which may be some planned event like maintenance or a shift changeover.
It’s also important to acknowledge when a particular machine is not operating because a separate machine upstream in the production line is down. This is similar to when a machine might be blocked – meaning that a downstream machine is offline and something of a bottleneck has developed.
All of these examples are technically downtime instances, yes – but they’re very different situations that require totally different resolutions. If you treat them all as if they’re the same – meaning that if you’re only paying attention to whether or not a machine is online – you’re only getting one small part of a much larger story.
Similarly, you need to make sure that your operators are prepared to assign detailed downtime reasons to all events. This is crucial to the ongoing problem-solving process. Many solutions can help assign downtime reasons automatically, but operator notes are still important to again provide that essential context. Without it, you’ll likely face the same recurring issues again and again – you’ll be treating the symptom, not the disease, so to speak. With accurate downtime reasons, you’ll have total visibility into what is happening and why – all so that you can make meaningful steps to improve your operations in the future.
If you’d like to find out more information about why effective downtime tracking requires you to dive beneath the data to uncover the true story of your business hiding in plain sight, or if you just have any additional questions that you’d like to get answers to, please feel free to contact Thrive today.
