Survey: Unplanned downtime costs businesses nearly quarter million dollars per hour
November 9, 2023 | By Mario Cywinski
Photo: ABB A survey from ABB has found that 68 per cent of industrial businesses in Canada experience unplanned outages at least once a month. The Value of Reliability survey found that this costs Canadian businesses $242,000 per hour, compared to $170,000 per hour globally.
“There’s no typical length for an outage, but consider one that lasts a working day of eight hours – based on the median hourly rate, it would cost a business one million dollars,“ said Hugues Therrien, ABB Canada Motors and Drives Service lead. “With this in mind, industrial businesses should aim to progress from a high-risk run-to-fail maintenance approach to a long-term outcome-based strategy. This will improve reliability, business reputation, competitivity, cut costs, and provide peace of mind – empowering businesses to focus on their core competence.”
Photo: ABB
The survey, which was conducted by Sapio Research in July this year, spoke to 3,215 maintenance decision-makers globally across many sectors. Interestingly, even with the high costs associated with downtime, the survey found that nearly one in five (19 per cent) of Canadian businesses still rely on run-to-fail maintenance.
Looking at things from a global perspective, 69 per cent of respondents have had unplanned downtime on critical equipment at least once a month (19 per cent a few times a month, 14 per cent several times a week, 14 per cent once a week, 13 per cent once a month, and eight per cent every day), with 14 per cent every quarter, eight per cent yearly, eight per cent less than once a year, and one per cent said never.
Photo: ABB
Most (92 per cent) of respondents said maintenance has increased their uptime over the last year. Breaking it down further, 40 per cent increased by 10 to 25 per cent, 27 per cent by 26 to 50 per cent, 14 per cent by less than 10 per cent, and 11 per cent by over 50 per cent. Furthermore, 75 per cent of respondents said reliability has made many positive impacts on their business.
Top priorities when purchasing equipment were reliability (46 per cent), safety (43 per cent), energy efficiency (41 per cent), compatibility with existing equipment (29 per cent), capital cost (25 per cent), total cost of ownership (23 per cent), uptime (20 per cent), recyclability/circularity (20 per cent), installation time (18 per cent), and hygiene (17 per cent).
Photo: ABB
Many companies (60 per cent) plan to increase investment in reliability and maintenance in the next three years, with a third planning to boost spending by over 10 per cent.
Why are companies putting additional focus on maintenance and reliability of their operations? When asked what the main benefits are, respondents said optimizing quality (43 per cent), ensuring product quality (43 per cent), extending equipment lifetime (39 per cent), avoiding downtime (37 per cent), energy savings (37 per cent), reliable supply to customers (35 per cent), avoiding extra costs (34 per cent), and minimizing waste (33 per cent).
Photo: ABB
Looking into the future, respondents looked at what they believe will impact their maintenance strategy going forward. The top answers were circularity (67 per cent). energy efficiency (65 per cent), digitalisation/IoT/big data/AI (63 per cent), partnerships/supply chain/collaboration (58 per cent), and augmented reality/VR/digital twin (47 per cent).
The full survey report can be found here.
