Downtime, the term coined to reflect when a production line is not producing product, is estimated by The International Society of Automation (ISA) to cost the manufacturing industry nearly $650 billion every year. While downtime can occur at any point in a production process, we’ll explore what producers can do to help minimize the risk and impact of downtime in the packaging phase of production. Good packaging machine and automation design works to prevent planned or unplanned downtime, and packaging process analysis can help identify potential downtime risks and improvement opportunities. Equipment designs that minimize the impact of tool changeovers, consumable replenishment, washdown, and other planned maintenance activities are an important piece of this puzzle. However, the unpredictable nature of unplanned downtime combined with many interrelated causation factors makes this a cause-celebre for most producers.

Downtime is the undisputed enemy in manufacturing. But do you know how much an hour of downtime actually costs?