Calculating the Cost of Downtime

Downtime can end up costing you a lot of money, especially when you consider all of the costs. The cost of downtime includes more than just the loss in production. There are a number of other factors that contribute to downtime costs.

Calculating the cost of downtime will differ for each company. It’s difficult to place an exact number on the cost of factory downtime, but the fact that unexpected downtime is expensive is universally true.

Here are some things to consider when it comes to calculating downtime costs.

Production delays

You’re not producing anything. If you’re not producing anything, you won’t have any revenue for the production lost during that downtime.

You must pay for the repairs to your machinery.

You’re paying workers who cannot do any work. You can’t send them home because the problem could be fixed at any minute. Sending workers home would prolong your downtime because you wouldn’t have any employees to work when the machines came back online.

Missing deadlines

Falling behind schedule could lead to a number of costs. Failing to meet deadlines can damages to your company’s reputation, or harm business relationships. You could lose contracts, or have to pay penalty fees.

When you’re pressured to meet deadlines, you could suffer costs like employee overtime, errors or lower quality due to hurried work. You could end up spending more on shipping to meet your deadline.

Failure to meet deadlines due to downtime can mean that your product doesn’t make it to shelves. When you’re unable to get your product on the shelves, customers will go with another option.

The bottom line

What you should take away from all of this is that downtime is extremely costly. There are a number of online downtime cost calculators out there that can help you find the exact amount of money you’re hemorrhaging for every hour your machinery isn’t working.

While you may want to know that information, why focus on how much money you’re losing when you can focus on preventing unexpected downtime from happening?

Sometimes accidents or unexpected errors happen, but you can minimize the likelihood of unanticipated downtime with regular maintenance and checking. Regular maintenance is important for all types of machinery, but it’s especially important for older machinery like Indramat motion control systems. It can be smart to go for remanufacturing of legacy components before they break down, in order to extend the life of your machinery.

Of course, if you do experience any unforeseen downtime, you want to get up and running as soon as possible. Give us a call for any Rexroth Indramat repairs or Indramat services that you need.