According to one recent study, the average cost of manufacturing downtime across all industries came to an incredible $260,000 per hour in 2016. To make matters worse, that represents a concerning 60% jump from just a few years earlier, in 2014.
Every minute that a machine is offline is a minute that it isn’t making your business money. It’s a minute that you’re delaying essential products from getting into the hands of your customers. It’s a minute that your operators are getting paid to essentially sit and wait. Many organizations turn to downtime tracking in an effort to combat this… but if you don’t do so in just the right way, you could end up doing more harm than good without realizing it.
The Problem With Getting Downtime Tracking Wrong
According to another recent study, industry experts believe that approximately 80% of all manufacturers can’t actually estimate their own downtime in an accurate way. This despite the fact that downtime is the single biggest cost of lost revenue in the world of manufacturing, so you’d think this would always be a top priority.
The major issue is that a lot of organizations are still insisting on tracking downtime by hand. When a machine goes offline, an operator now has to take written notes or enter data into a spreadsheet concerning what happened, what the actual problem was and what steps were taken to fix it.
The trouble with this approach is that it really doesn’t tell you as much as you think it does. You may know exactly when a problem happened, but the “why” of it all is less clear. Was it some type of freak accident that won’t be repeated? Was it operator error? Was it a recurring issue? There’s really no way to differentiate between these things, yet all of them require different resolutions to stop the problem from happening again.
Indeed, this type of improper downtime tracking virtually guarantees that the same issues will repeat themselves at some point in the future. You’re never totally sure that you’re getting the most out of your equipment investment because you’re not really dealing with valid data to begin with.
That’s ultimately why an automated downtime tracking solution like Thrive is of paramount importance. Not only does it instantly collect data pertaining to even the smallest downtime instance, but it does so automatically in a way that virtually eliminates human error in the process.
What you’re left with is an accurate, historical data set to draw from – one that also helps you uncover trends and patterns that you may not have even been aware of. This helps you make meaningful improvements to your operations on a regular basis, which itself is always the most important goal.
If you’d like to learn more about the potential ramifications of improper downtime tracking procedures, or if you’d like to learn more about what our innovative downtime tracking and OEE solution can do for you, please feel free to contact the team at Thrive today.
