Why Downtime Tracking is About More Than Just Tracking Downtime

As the name suggests, downtime tracking solutions like those available from Thrive are an efficient way to virtually eliminate instances of unplanned downtime across your business. Not only do these events take up an enormous amount of time, but when you consider the costs to repair machines and the productivity losses alone, they add up to an incredible amount of money, too.

But a lot of people don’t realize that downtime tracking also brings with it a host of other unique benefits – ones that don’t just save your organization money, but that can also end up generating a significant amount of revenue in the process.

Downtime Tracking: It’s More Versatile Than You Think

At its core, downtime tracking software is a way to better understand not only what is happening across your enterprise, but why it’s happening. That context is something that a lot of business leaders lack – and it’s also a lot more important than they might think.

Case in point: downtime tracking can be a viable way to help identify those parts of your current processes that don’t necessarily add as much value as you think they do, thus giving you a chance to eliminate them and streamline things across the board. Who wouldn’t want to condense a 10 step process into 5 steps, thus speeding things up in a way that gets products into the hands of customers faster than ever? Everyone would – and downtime tracking over time can absolutely help make that happen.

Another one of the biggest boosts that downtime tracking offers has to do with how it helps to prevent bottlenecks that may exist in the manufacturing process. This is true regardless of the industry you’re talking about – be it pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, automotive manufacturing and more.

The more you understand about your current processes, the more you can see where any “weak links in the chain” may reside. You don’t just know how much time it takes to produce a part – you know why it’s taking so much time, all in an effort to better optimize things for maximum efficiency across the board. Issues can easily be eliminated to improve operations, and thus generate more revenue.

Beyond that, downtime tracking allows organizational leaders to better optimize not only scheduling, but the allocation of resources as well. By comparing one assembly line or plant to the next, you can see where variations may exist – all to eliminate elements that may be costing too much time and money.

In the end, downtime tracking gives business owners an almost unprecedented level of visibility into what is going on in terms of the entirety of their manufacturing process. This is true from the stage where they’re working with raw materials, all the way up through when they deliver products into the hands of satisfying customers. This traceability isn’t just important in terms of optimizing costs and cutting down on budgets. It also helps them comply with rigid quality standards, too – ones that obviously vary wildly depending on exactly which industry they’re talking about. When you consider the fact that it also helps create better experiences on behalf of those customers, it’s easy to see why this is certainly one of the most important benefits of all.

If you’d like to find out about all of the additional benefits of tracking downtime across your organization, or if you just have any additional questions that you want to discuss with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact Thrive today.