DOWNTIME: A MASSIVE BURDEN THAT WE NEED TO CONFRONT Manufacturers in the UK and Europe will lose more than £80bn in 2025 as a result of unplanned downtime, according to new research by the IT consultancy, IDS-Indata. It estimates that the automotive sector alone could lose more than £12bn. The study places the blame on a combination of factors, including ageing machinery, increasing cyber-threats, regulatory and compliance bottlenecks, labour shortages and skills gaps, and outdated OT (operational technology). There are wide variations in the severity of shutdowns between di erent sectors of industry – and what they cost each sector. For example, the food processing companies typically experience multiple minor stoppages, each lasting 1-3 hours, and totalling an average of around 442 hours every year. The hourly cost of this downtime is a relatively modest £18,000-25,000, but the total annual bill in the UK is estimated to be £4-5bn. The automotive sector, by contrast, typically experiences 20-25 incidents every month, each lasting around 3-4 hours, and costing £1.6-2m per hour of downtime. Across Europe and the UK, the total annual bill amounts to £1012m, according to IDS-Indata. The packaging industry experiences lots of short disruptions, typically lasting 30 minutes to a couple of hours and costing £10,000-30,000 per hour. In the UK alone, the total annual bill comes to £3-5bn. So what can be done to reduce the interruptions and cut these costs? This is one area where AI could deliver real, tangible benets. Siemens and ABB have both recently launched generative AI tools that they claim will reduce downtime (see pages 16 and 21). Siemens says that its Industrial Copilot tool will cut maintenance times by an average of 25%, while ABB asserts that its tool will help to resolve most technical support issues “within minutes”,. Predictive maintenance is far preferable to reactive maintenance. Knowing when machinery is likely to fail, and planning maintenance at convenient times to tackle issues before they become catastrophic, is much better than having to cope with unplanned shutdowns. This, in turn, means that we need e ective real-time monitoring and data analytics. There has been considerable progress in both of these areas in recent years. Returning to the IDS-Indata study, the company’s chief information security ocer, Ryan Cooke, points out that the gures “highlight the critical need for manufacturers to invest in predictive maintenance and digital resilience. “Downtime is not just an inconvenience,” he says. ”It’s a multi-billion pound problem impacting supply chains, production eciency and protability.” And it is a problem that we cannot a ord to ignore. Tony Sacks, Editor n COMMENT Follow us on LinkedIn @Drives & Controls Follow us X Drives&Controls & rives Join us Facebo Drives & C on X @Drivesn Forthe D on ok Controls Controls latest news visit Controls the Driv www.driv ves & Controls we vesncontrols.com
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