This is excerpted from and Industry Week article "Reliability approach to asset uptime" by Jill Jusko
"ARC Advisory Group reported its belief that the impact of unplanned downtime on revenue and profitability in the process industries has been “vastly underestimated.” “ARC estimates that downtime costs the process industries somewhere in the area of a trillion dollars a year, “ wrote ARC’s Larry O’Brien in a blog post. Sometimes unplanned downtime is unavoidable. For instance, when hurricanes like Harvey, Irma and Maria sweep through an area, manufacturers have limited actions they can take to keep operations up and going. But in many instances, manufacturers can and likely should do more to keep their assets operating in optimal condition. . . "
"Research shows that just 17% of unscheduled downtime can be attributed to the maintenance function, says Life Cycle Engineering’s Brad Cunic, senior vice president of its reliability consulting group. Given that data point, manufacturers should take note of where downtime opportunities occur. Defects or downtime are interjected throughout the equipment lifecycle, from the initial equipment design to procurement functions focused on lowest cost versus total cost of ownership, to equipment operators who may be mishandling the assets they run."