Limiting the number and duration of production downtimes is one of the main missions of maintenance teams. By relying on a high-performance CMMS, they can be more efficient and help the company gain in productivity.
The consequences of production downtime
Regardless of the cause, downtime has a significant impact on industrial operations. Each downtime can impact production and maintenance costs, customer satisfaction and inventory management.
Substantial costs
The first visible impact of a production shutdown is financial. The True Downtime Cost (TDC) is a key indicator of industrial performance.
Direct sales loss
This is the worst case scenario: the equipment that breaks down is a “bottleneck machine”. Its breakdown immediately leads to a total production downtime, which has a direct financial impact on the business.
In addition, one must add to this loss of profit :
- the cost of fixed charges (building rental, salaries to be paid, taxes…) ;
- possible penalties for late payment;
- corrective maintenance costs.
Costs of corrective maintenance
In the best case, if the failed equipment can be replaced almost instantly (at least temporarily), then the production downtime will be limited to a disruption.
Downtime costs are then limited to corrective maintenance costs, which can nevertheless be high depending on the equipment.
Impact on customer satisfaction
Apart from the direct financial impact, a production stoppage is also synonymous with delays, lack of visibility and therefore customer dissatisfaction.
Production and delivery delays
A production stoppage that results in delivery delays can cause a customer to go elsewhere, at least temporarily.
If you don’t know when the problem will be fixed, the uncertainty of the timeframe can lead your customer to go elsewhere, often permanently.
Impact on inventory management
Production downtime often has an impact on inventory and stock management. For example, in the case of a machine breakdown on the packaging line, unpackaged products accumulate and increase inventory, without being able to be sent to the customer.
If these products are perishable, the accumulation of stocks quickly turns into an accumulation of waste, which also generates processing costs, sometimes significant.
Finally, operating in degraded mode also has an impact on this “storage” aspect, since this less optimal way of producing risks generating more rejects and waste.
How to reduce production downtime with CMMS?
The use of a CMMS is the main way to limit the frequency and duration of production stops.
Develop preventive maintenance
The main way to avoid production downtime is to develop preventive maintenance. This allows, through maintenance and revision of a company’s assets, to keep them in optimal operating conditions in order to reduce the probability of an unexpected breakdown. Although downtime may be necessary from time to time, it is less costly when properly planned.
The implementation of planned maintenance requires the creation and application of preventive maintenance plans adapted to each machine. To do this, the best solution is to have a CMMS software that offers an easy-to-use and flexible maintenance plan functionality.
Anticipate your spare parts needs
Production downtime sometimes lasts longer than it should because of a lack of available spare parts. To avoid this type of situation, the use of a CMMS integrating a spare parts inventory tracking function is necessary.
The Mobility Work application allows the technicians to inform at each intervention, including on a smartphone, the spare parts they have taken out of stock.
Purchasing and warehousing departments can monitor stock levels, be alerted when a minimum threshold is reached, and replenish parts before they run out.
