🏆 State of Industrial Maintenance Report 2024: Share Your Insights, Earn Rewards! 🏆

Our facility has managed to reduce downtime incidents. Going live with MaintainX this 2024 has been the biggest reason however by performing the PM as scheduled and gaining buy-in from Management and Operations staff the unplanned maintenance has dropped significantly even in this short time frame since Jan/Feb 2024. By doing so out cost is decreasing as well. Down time has improved, and data shows the evidence. Protecting and managing our Assets is critical to operation.

Peter Walker

Fitz-Thors Manufacturing

In my view - Maintenance team do not want to change his way of working still working with old traditional way.

Technology / software like MaintainX can help in document & monitor all deficiency & discrepancy in the Schedule maintenance procedure and corrective action can be taken.     

This issue doesn’t seem to pertain to our team use of Maintainx.  The question is a little confusing but I’m assuming by unplanned downtime incidents you mean something breaking or not working which leads to employees not being able to perform their jobs.  With my team being the facilities and maintenance crew for a large outdoor shopping mall and other commercial properties, it’s really the opposite for us.  If things aren’t breaking or needing repair or regular maintenance, that is when our team experiences downtime. 

I’d say about 97% of our work orders created are reactive maintenance rather than preventative.  We simply don’t have the machinery like a factory or some place similar does that needs to be maintained in order to provide work for employees.   For us, it seems like the only thing that leads to downtime is being too productive and completing all assigned work orders, or a failure to create any new ones by requestors and managers.  So for these reasons I find it hard to relate to the 85% decrease 30% increase study results; assuming I’m even understanding the question correctly.    

At our facility, we've managed to reduce unplanned downtime incidents by 20% over the past year, primarily by implementing a more rigorous preventive maintenance schedule using MaintainX. One specific strategy we've employed is increasing the frequency of equipment inspections, which has allowed us to catch potential issues before they lead to downtime.

However, this improvement came with its own set of challenges. Our maintenance costs have risen by about 10% due to the need for additional resources and training. For example, we've had to invest in new diagnostic tools and in training our team to use them effectively.

Despite these increased costs, the reduction in downtime has led to a more stable production process, which we expect will pay off in the long run. The key has been balancing the immediate cost increase with the long-term benefits of enhanced reliability and efficiency.

Prior to the integration of MaintainX into our facility management system, we were consistently challenged by issues stemming from unplanned downtime. This not only affected our operational efficiency but also led to increased maintenance costs. However, since the adoption of MaintainX in June 2023, we’ve observed a remarkable transformation in our maintenance operations. Our total preventive maintenance ratio—a key performance indicator in facility management—has soared to an impressive 86%. This indicates that a vast majority of our maintenance activities are now proactive rather than reactive, which is a fundamental shift in our approach to facility upkeep.

As a result of this strategic move, we’ve also witnessed a substantial reduction in our overall operations cost, reflecting our systems' enhanced efficiency and reliability. MaintainX's data-driven insights have enabled us to optimize our maintenance schedules, allocate resources more effectively, and ultimately improve our bottom line.

Our unplanned downtime was substantially lower on our most difficult machinery. We had, at the beginning of 2022, a curing oven that could not run more than 3 hours without stopping for one issue or another. Some of these could take days to repair. After starting a PM schedule, and implementing recurring work orders in MaintainX, we now have a machine that is more manageable than we thought possible. It is scheduled for weekly PM and adjustment.

That being said, our cost for issues has increased due to not having easy access to the parts we need. I have found higher prices and lower availability for several parts and pieces needed to keep the equipment in good working order. As well as the elevated costs of getting factory techs in to service or repair the equipment. We have lowered our overall costs, but individual problems have increased substantially.

When finding a system that works well in finding maintenance opportunities, you should expect considerable cost increases for at least the first year.

That % may be 10-20% or 700% increase in PM costs, it all depends on how much your company is doing before doing “Better”

We have seen a substantial increase in cost, but our equipment uptime is over 96%, being a 23% increase from the year prior.

To better plan and address findings, we created a budget plan after 90 days of using this system to be better prepared for costs. By pulling our production rates for the quarter, and downtime. We were easily able to demonstrate the time and money going into equipment was paying itself off.
Not to mention, as you handle these things, they should not all be reoccurring.

Having a parts inventory has also helped us drive down costs. 
Some parts have extensive lead times and hold up production or leave you with expensive alternatives.
For parts that change out every quarter and take 6 months to receive, we have been able to better time when we order our parts, while staying lean for as long as possible.

Another challenge most facilities face is getting employees to report equipment failure, which leads to more issues.
To improve our catches and timely repairs, there are MaintainX barcodes and instructions in every department, and every main asset has a barcode attached for asset reference. 
(This may seem minor, but it will improve your early catches significantly)

Hope this all helps, best way to save is to fix it right once, and then stay on top of consumables and wear parts. 

We implemented MaintainX in September of 2023. Prior to this we were trying to do everything with paperwork. Keeping up with preventative maintenance of over 400 pieces of equipment became a nightmare. Everyday we would be in firefighter mode. Moving forward into MaintainX we have decreased our reactive maintenance by 37% in the last year. We have completed over 30K work orders during this period. 

Our downtime has certainly decreased exponentially. We have learned critical items to stock to keep our equipment running. Doing mechanical and electrical inspections that allow you to plan for the future by flagging or failing an inspection leads to minimizing downtime on equipment. As our production needs change it also lends to giving us a schedule to implement with our production team to allow for preventative maintenance in an effort to minimize downtime.

In some ways we are spending more money to keep a proper inventory, however equipment is running more than ever before. This allows for proper planning and reduction in machine downtime. Looking to the future, implementing new sensors to communicate with MaintanX we hope to reduce this percentage even further.

Changing communication to allow for employees to report equipment failure. We have this struggle, but once the dynamics change we start to see buy in from employees and this becomes our biggest strength.

It sounds like you're looking for insights on downtime management! Many facilities that have successfully reduced unplanned downtime often implement proactive maintenance strategies, invest in training, and leverage technology for real-time monitoring,using CCMS systems  These approaches not only lower incident rates but can also lead to reduced overall costs by minimizing production interruptions and improving efficiency.

When downtime incidents decrease, facilities typically see benefits like increased productivity, lower labor costs, and improved asset utilization. Conversely, if a facility still faces rising costs despite fewer incidents, it may be due to factors like outdated equipment, high repair costs, or inefficiencies in operations.

We implemented MaintainX in Feb of 2024. Prior to this we were trying to do everything with Excell sheets , forms & paperwork. Keeping up with preventative maintenance of over 12 Project in KSa Riyadh  it became uncontrol situation

 Everyday we are in firefighter mode. Moving forward into MaintainX we have decreased our reactive maintenance by 21% in the last 7 months year. We have completed over 2000 work orders during this period. 

Our downtime has certainly decreased exponentially. We have learned critical items to stock to keep our equipment running. Doing mechanical and electrical inspections that allow you to plan for the future by flagging or failing an inspection leads to minimizing downtime on equipment.

As our operation  needs change it also lends to giving us a schedule to implement with our production team to allow for preventative maintenance in an effort to minimize downtime.

 spending more money to enhance proper inventory level , however equipment is running smoothly  . This leads to reduction in machine downtime. We are willing for more in th near future 

Our facilities have managed to considerably reduce downtime across all of our sites as a result of increasing planned downtime and strengthening our monitoring programs and the operational agility of our on-site Maintenance Teams. We have seen drops in downtime as high as 200%, with an average drop of 82% over the past 9 months, and some of this is due to the implementation of MaintainX itself. Our Maintenance Teams have achieved higher consistency, shared knowledge and experience faster and more seamlessly, and we have begun the journey to creating predictive breakdown models to start establishing preemptive replacement schedules for key assets.

That said, our maintenance costs have barely moved and have often actually increased throughout that same period. The biggest driver of that cost we have found is our reliance on external vendors and technicians and the increasing cost of service, especially for service occurring outside of standard operating hours. In an effort to increase planned downtime without hampering our productivity, more downtime during off hours is required, and overtime/weekend price adjustments have affected our ability to reduce cost. One current cost reduction strategy we are exploring for this area is expanding system redundancy (i.e. secondary pneumatic supply system to engage while servicing the primary) to move more of our external vendor service into our normal operating hours and avoid overtime/evening/weekend upcharges.

Our company has also implemented a centralized spare parts warehouse where we store long lead-time parts in an effort to mitigate downtime as a result of part failure. This has improved our ability to recover from breakdowns by adding a layer of protection from part procurement issues or availability problems, but likewise the rising cost of parts has also meant an increase in costs to stock and maintain that centralized warehouse. Much like with our reliance on external vendors, the trade off for increasing uptime was a parallel increase

Overall, while we have increased maintenance costs that came with an exchange for greater equipment uptime and less lost productivity. We are comfortable with the result of this trade off in strengthening our uptime on processing, especially given our higher daily operating costs. Failures to fulfill quotas have been seen as damaging our reliability and customer satisfaction, whereas increased maintenance costs can be factored into our cost per item produced, which has satisfied our leadership team in a broader sense of generating stability. Current future goals for us are still primarily focused on reliability increase over lower costs, but this is mercurial and could shift once we are more satisfied with our MTBF and overall asset uptime.