Report: Unplanned downtime costs manufacturers $125,000 per hour

Oct. 17, 2023
Sapio Research conducted the survey in July to learn how businesses currently manage maintenance and how they can reduce unplanned downtime.

ABB has released the results of its latest survey. Titled “Value of Reliability,” the survey is comprised of responses from 3,215 plant maintenance decision-makers across the world. Sapio Research conducted the survey in July to learn how businesses currently manage maintenance and how they can reduce unplanned downtime.

According to the report, 67% of surveyed companies experience unplanned outages at least once a month. Even though these outages cost businesses approximately $125,000 per hour, 21% of respondents still rely on run-to-fail maintenance. Additional findings include:

  • 92% of respondents claim that maintenance has increased their uptime in the last year
  • 75% of companies said that reliability positively impacts their business reputation and financial performance4
  • 60% of those surveyed plan to increase their investment in reliability and maintenance in the next three years

In an excerpt from the report, Virve Viitanen, Head of Global Customer Care and Support for ABB Motion Services, writes, “Regular maintenance is important to all industrial businesses, but certain strategies are more effective than others at achieving uptime. Nine in ten respondents said that maintenance has increased their uptime in the last year, but businesses using a condition-based strategy reported the best performance. While almost half of respondents identified reliability as a top priority when purchasing equipment, only 20 percent said the same of uptime. This underscores a critical point– operators are still not making the connection between the benefits of reliable equipment on uptime, their business reputation, and their bottom line.”

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