Avoidable downtime damaging performance of UK manufacturing economy

The study, Downtime: Problems, Attitudes and Practices in Manufacturing Industry was commissioned by maintenance management systems developer Idhammar and involved 200 companies. Most production directors and maintenance managers interviewed agreed that downtime is a significant problem, with 88% saying it nearly always means lost production and more than one fifth believing product quality is adversely affected. Yet more than half those interviewed also admitted that insufficient time had been spent on assessing the effect of downtime on profitability in their companies. 31% said that the issue was not discussed at board level. In addition, the survey shows that nearly a quarter of UK manufacturing companies are not currently pursuing ways of reducing downtime, while 30% have no budget whatsoever to support a drive to reduce downtime. Other key problem factors were seen as a shortage of skilled operators (43%), followed by unreliable equipment (39%) and insufficient maintenance planning (33 %). Idhammar Systems director John Roberts says: “The future managing downtime must be a board-level priority if UK manufacturing firms are to survive within a globally-competitive market.” And he adds: “Whilst the findings reveal that awareness of downtime has improved since 1996, as has active management of the issue, there is still a long way to go. This survey shows that downtime reduction is critical to business’ success.