Our biggest challenge is downtime. Can an ITAC assessment really help us reduce unplanned outages?
Yes. While the ITAC’s primary goal is efficiency, productivity recommendations often target downtime. For example, predictive maintenance using vibration sensors, thermography, or even basic maintenance schedules can catch issues before failures occur. Plants that adopt these recommendations often see double-digit reductions in unplanned downtime.
Downtime is expensive for us. How do you usually calculate the savings from reducing it?
Savings are tied to the cost of lost production and labor. If your line is down for 20 hours a year, and each hour costs $5,000 in lost output, that’s a $100,000 annual cost. A 20% reduction from better maintenance or scheduling saves you $20,000 annually. Those savings are calculated the same way we quantify energy savings, just in productivity terms.