Yesterday was tough. My computer crashed, the copier broke, and our coffee machine went on strike while I was rushing to meet a deadline. I called our IT tech, the copier repairperson, and the local coffee shop to fix the problems (not necessarily in that order), and then my blood pressure spiked when I figured out how late I\u2019d have to stay to get everything done.<\/p>\n
Maintenance managers know exactly what I\u2019m talking about. The maintenance team is on the frontline when things aren\u2019t working, and we spend lots of time talking to management about the cost of downtime in manufacturing. But do we spend the time to really understand what it is, or how it\u2019s measured?<\/p>\n
According to Wikipedia<\/a>, \u201cThe term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. Downtime or outage duration refers to a period of time that a system fails to provide or perform its primary function.\u201d<\/p>\n That definition covers the basics, but in the real world just about every organization defines and measures equipment downtime a little differently. Here at MPulse, we\u2019ve learned to dig a little deeper when our customers start asking questions about metrics like mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR), or total downtime. We don\u2019t just assume we know what they want\u2014it\u2019s our job to understand what they\u2019re really looking for and show them how their MPulse Software, Inc can help them measure it on their own terms.<\/p>\n Everyone needs a starting point to understanding downtime, and we thought this production downtime calculator recently published by Software Advice* was a pretty good one. (Click here <\/a>for instructions.) Play around with it and ask yourself these questions:<\/p>\n\n