← Equipment management glossary
Also called: machine downtime, unplanned downtime.
The repair invoice was six hundred. The pour it stopped cost four thousand in standing time and a hire machine at weekend rates. Only the six hundred was ever written down.
Because only direct repair is usually captured, downtime is systematically under-costed — which makes maintenance budgets look expensive against a benefit nobody measured.
Availability
Availability = (Uptime ÷ (Uptime + Downtime)) × 100
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Uptime
Hours the equipment was available for use.
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Downtime
Planned and unplanned, and they are different problems. Unplanned failure costs several times more than the same hours chosen in advance, because work stops, people stand idle, parts are sourced at emergency rates and something downstream misses a commitment.
The whole argument for preventive maintenance is trading cheap planned hours for expensive unplanned ones. Tracking the two separately is what lets you check whether that trade is actually working.
The four costs
Direct repair — parts and labour, the only one most organisations record. Lost output — what would have been produced or delivered. Idle resources — people and other equipment waiting. Knock-on cost — missed deadlines, expedited shipping, hired replacements, and the customer relationship.
Because only the first is usually captured, downtime is systematically under-costed, which makes maintenance budgets look expensive relative to a benefit nobody measured.
What goes wrong without it
Organisations that record only repair cost see maintenance as an expense rather than an offset, because the far larger cost of unplanned stoppage was never measured.
How Itefy handles it
Itefy tracks condition and uptime per item and reports on downtime, so the pattern behind repeated failures becomes visible instead of anecdotal. Read more.