Downtimes in Manufacturing

Any time a machine is not working is called downtime. There may be different reasons for those downtimes. Whatever it may be, one thing’s for sure: it cost a fortune to manufacturing industries. Thus, industries need to minimize these downtimes as much as possible.

Let’s clear our thoughts on what downtime is, why we need to monitor it, and even minimize it.

It is necessary to understand downtimes in detail to minimize them. It represent the single largest loss of production time and income that manufacturers face. Therefore, it’s important to know the value of the time lost when not fixing downtimes. The production time lost during downtimes has a monetary value to it because it represents products that were not produced and therefore sold. Still, many industries ignore or overlook that precious lost time and it costs them a fortune.

There are various types of Downtimes, categorized under two broad categories:

Unplanned downtime is 15 times more costly than planned ones. There’s a thing in maths called “limit tends to zero”. It means it can go as close to zero but never be zero. Similarly, downtime will tend to zero but never be zero due to planned downtimes.

The ideal global aim for downtime is to bring unplanned ones to 10% or less. It is important to aim for low downtimes as it directly affects all the three components of OEE, and your profits.

Monitoring downtimes and fixing them as soon as possible is a matter of urgency for all manufacturers due to the major benefits it can bring:

Real-time monitoring is important as it helps in determining the upcoming downtimes and resolving them beforehand. It monitors machines in real-time, capturing faults and localizing them. It then sends this information to the server, where it is processed, and the responsible personnel is alerted adequately. This personnel can then resolve the fault and by doing so, either reduce the downtime or completely avoid it. There are various real-time monitoring systems available on the market that can help in this process. Clariprod is one of them and it helps manufacturers create a history of their production runs, faults, solutions, downtimes, and much more. This helps manufacturers analyze a machine’s work in regards to the future, and controls downtimes. It optimizes the machine’s utility.

All the points discussed above give us a clear idea that addressing downtime is one of the most basic, significant, and easy ways to increase throughput. We know that it is not possible to completely eradicate downtimes, as some need to be planned and therefore calculated in the price the parts are sold, but taking the necessary steps to bring the unplanned downtimes below the standard value reaps many benefits.

Keep in mind: monitor downtime in real-time, identify causes and localize the area, resolve the issue and reduce downtimes.