Believe it or not, there are still manufacturing organizations that track their downtime events and related data manually. They usually do so by entering information into spreadsheets using applications like Microsoft Excel and others.
To be fair, there was an era when this was more than adequate to “get the job done,” so to speak. But that era has long since ended – especially for those businesses who want to remain as competitive as possible.
All told, there are a wide range of different problems associated with tracking downtime events via spreadsheets that are certainly worth a closer look.
The Trouble With Spreadsheets: An Overview
By far, the biggest issue associated with tracking downtime via spreadsheets is that it depends on your workers having the time to enter information as soon after the event as possible. At the same time, they’re also probably focusing on getting that machine back online – meaning that opening Microsoft Excel and spending time entering data is never going to be their top priority, nor should it be. Because of that, it’s very easy to miss certain events – leading to inaccurate data that is difficult to draw appropriate conclusions from.
Along the same lines, this type of manual data gives way to the dreaded human error – something that also calls into question the validity of the information you’re working with. In this situation, the length of a downtime event is probably an estimate, for example. An employee may have rounded up and said that a piece of equipment was offline for an hour, when it was really only down for about 45 minutes. It may not seem like a big difference, but it is – especially when you’re using that information to prioritize resource allocation in the future.
Not only that, but they may have considered a downtime event to be “so small” that they didn’t have to record it in the first place. Doing so wasn’t worth their time when the event didn’t really lead to any type of significant disruption. But it’s still something you need to know about when putting together a preventative maintenance plan – which is now crucial information that you just don’t have.
Finally, as spreadsheets get larger and larger, they become slower and more difficult to work with. They were never designed with this purpose in mind and by continuing to use them in that way, you’re actually making it more difficult for people to do their jobs. In reality, the exact opposite should be true – technology should support and empower them.
All of these issues underline why automated downtime tracking like the capabilities offered by Thrive’s solution are so important. They eliminate the need for your employees to do anything at all, capturing accurate information in real-time with the highest level of detail possible. Operators are now free to focus more of their attention on those tasks that truly need them, as opposed to dealing with unwieldy spreadsheets and matters that just don’t concern them.
