The Cost of Downtime

We help with Indramat repair and reman, getting your Indramat motion control systems back up and running so you can get on with your work fast. Most of the service calls we get come from engineers who need a quick solution to a non-working Indramat unit. They can’t run down to the local big box store and pick up a new one, so they call us to repair or replace that unit. It’s usually a relief for them to talk with Indramat specialists (that’s us) who know exactly what they need to get back to work.

Every now and then we talk to someone who isn’t brushing sparks off his lapel while we chat, and who feels relaxed enough to want to shop around. Sometimes they decide to go with a replacement part from eBay or a third party repair done with who knows what parts. Not original parts — you can be sure of that.

Once they’ve spent a few days hunting down a bargain, another week or two waiting for delivery, and a couple more weeks troubleshooting that unsatisfactory stopgap measure, they call us back and we solve their problem. Of course, by then they’ve already spent a lot more than if they’d accepted our help in the first place. Not only because they had to pay for the poor quality repair or replacement they tried out, but also because they didn’t consider the cost of downtime.

Downtime

Downtime is the time when your machine is not working. The machine is down so you’re producing nothing, but the costs continue to add up. The lights are on, the staff is hanging around waiting for the machine to get back to work, and both IT and customer service are working extra.

A recent study of the cost of downtime found that 82% of companies participating in the survey had experienced unplanned downtime in the preceding three years. Those companies experienced some consequences:

  • 46 percent couldn’t deliver services to their customers
  • 37 percent lost production time
  • 29 percent were unable to service or support the assets

Others had lost business, seen or feared security breaches, and lost data. The average cost of downtime, according to this report, was $260,000 per hour.

However, most of the respondents admitted that they didn’t even know how much downtime cost them.

Don’t take a chance on extended downtime. Call us immediately when you need Indramat support or service.