If you had to make a list of some of the things that keep manufacturers up at night, downtime would undoubtedly be right at the top.
One minute, your manufacturing lines are operating at peak efficiency – or at least as close to it as possible – and everything seems to be going smoothly. The next, a critical piece of equipment has gone offline and you’re not sure when it’s going to be up again. Every minute that machine isn’t running is a minute you’re losing money – a worst case scenario if there ever was one.
That, in essence, is why downtime tracking is so important. It doesn’t just tell you what went wrong – it gives you insight into why, all so that you can do something about it as quickly as possible.
But simply having that information isn’t enough to get the job done. You still need to put yourself in a position to act on it – something that depends on your ability to keep a few important things in mind.
The Art of Downtime Tracking: An Overview
Obviously, the biggest element to reducing downtime is an awareness of what is happening to begin with – something that downtime tracking software helps enormously with. You can see a real-time view into your current operations and compare it to a historical overview of the types of common issues that you’ve been experiencing. At that point, you’re able to see which issues crop up time and again so that you can take permanent steps to fix them.
At the same time, you also need to know more about important metrics like how long it is taking your teams to repair those assets whenever they go offline. Your overall responses to downtime instances need to be recorded and evaluated just as closely as the events themselves. This will help make sure that your people have the tools they need to make repairs quickly, all to get those machines online again as fast as they can.
Similarly, you need to be able to understand the amount of time that is happening between downtime events as it relates not just to specific pieces of equipment, but to your entire line. This will give you the actionable insight you need to put together a better, more proactive maintenance program that allows you to stop small problems now before they have a chance to become much bigger ones down the road.
In the end, understand that when you’re talking about machines and technology, downtime is never something that you can truly eliminate. This is absolutely one of those situations where Murphy’s Law very much applies. But you can take meaningful steps to mitigate the risk and impact of these events when they do occur, which is exactly what downtime tracking is all about.
Your ability to think and act quickly depends on the quality of your data, which is why picking the right downtime tracking solution should always be a top priority.
