May 21, 2025
Every minute a machine sits idle on the production floor, it silently chips away at your bottom line. Whether it’s an unexpected equipment failure or a scheduled maintenance window that runs too long, downtime in manufacturing comes at the cost of lost productivity, missed deadlines, and frustrated teams.
This translates into staggering financial losses for manufacturers—a recent study by Siemens has found that unplanned downtime consumes up to 11% of the revenue of Fortune Global 500 companies, or $1.4 trillion per year. Downtime is inevitable, but unmanaged downtime is optional. Tracking it is the first step toward controlling it.
Machine downtime tracking is the foundation of any serious effort to improve efficiency, reduce unplanned stops, and empower your teams to take meaningful action. When done right, it gives you a clear view of where time is being lost—and what it’s really costing your operation. Even small improvements in downtime can result in major gains in productivity and profitability.
In this guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know about downtime tracking, including:
Let’s start with the basics.
Downtime tracking is the process of recording, categorizing, and analyzing periods when machines or production lines are not operating as planned. This includes everything from unexpected breakdowns to scheduled maintenance or production pauses. Although planned downtime is inevitable, unplanned downtime can have serious consequences for business performance.
Tracking downtime offers real-time insights into patterns and root causes that trigger these incidents. When frontline workers log the reason for a stop or when sensors automatically flag an issue, you create a system of continuous improvement that enables you to keep your lines running consistently.
Over time, you can start answering critical questions like:
Not all downtime is created equal. Some interruptions are part of the plan, such as scheduled maintenance or equipment changeovers. Others hit without warning, disrupting output and causing costly delays. To manage and reduce downtime effectively, you first need to understand the different types of downtime in manufacturing and how to categorize them.
At the highest level, downtime can be divided into two main categories:
Planned downtime includes scheduled events that pause production intentionally. These pauses are often essential for operations to run smoothly, but they still come with opportunity costs.
Common examples of planned downtime include:
| Example | Task | Why track it? |
| Scheduled maintenance | Weekly tasks like lubrication or belt replacement | Avoids breakdowns and reveals efficiency gaps |
| Changeovers | Switching SKUs, adjusting conveyors, and tools | Tracks time and shows where to standardize |
| Sanitation procedures | Cleaning lines between runs for safety or compliance | Ensures safe practices without excessive delays |
| Operator training | Pausing lines to train new or reassigned workers | Helps schedule better and spot readiness gaps |
| Calibration or inspection | Performing routine checks on equipment or processes | Keeps compliance tight and time under control |
Even though these events are expected, poor coordination or inefficient execution can cause planned stops to last far longer than necessary.
Unplanned downtime happens without warning, and it’s often the most expensive and disruptive type. These events bring production to a halt and typically require immediate investigation and intervention.
Research shows that plants experience 25 unplanned downtime incidents per month per facility, resulting in a loss of 27 hours of production time. While these numbers have decreased in recent years, primarily due to advances in predictive maintenance, the opportunity cost to the business is far too great to overlook.
Common examples of unplanned downtime include:
| Example | Issue | Why track it? |
| Equipment failure | Machine stops mid-run due to mechanical issues | Supports root cause analysis and maintenance planning |
| Conveyor jam | Bottles pile up from a blocked sensor or misalignment | Flags recurring setup issues for quick fixes |
| Power or software glitch | Unexpected shutdowns from control system errors | Builds history for IT and engineering reviews |
| Material shortage | Line waits for missing ingredients or packaging | Exposes supply chain delays and helps adjust ordering |
| Labor interruption | Operator absence with no trained backup | Reveals training gaps and improves scheduling |
These events often reveal underlying gaps in maintenance, training, or coordination. Since they’re unplanned, the longer they last, the more damage is done to output, morale, and profitability.
It’s not enough to track “how much” downtime you’ve had. You need to know what kind of downtime it is and why it occurred.
Clear categorization allows teams to dig into the root causes:
Over time, these insights into the types of downtime in manufacturing help prioritize the most impactful changes, transforming downtime tracking from a reactive tool into a proactive strategy.
Machine downtime tracking gives your team the visibility to fix small issues before they become big problems. Downtime tracking is one of the fastest, most actionable ways to boost uptime, drive productivity, and improve profitability on the plant floor. When teams can conduct equipment downtime analysis to see exactly what’s stopping production and why, they can fix issues faster, prevent them from happening again, and shift from firefighting to fine-tuning.
Here are five real-world benefits you’ll see once you start tracking downtime consistently.
Unplanned stops are among the most expensive inefficiencies in manufacturing. By logging every unplanned event—whether it’s a conveyor jam or a blown motor—you can start identifying patterns, spotting hidden issues, fixing them faster, and preventing them from slowing you down again. Even better, it helps your entire team work with more clarity, ownership, and confidence.
Maybe the same machine fails every Monday morning. Maybe a certain part keeps causing quality issues. Whatever the cause, having data means you and your team can do something to reduce machine downtime.
When you know exactly where time is being lost, you can get more out of your equipment, people, and resources. That might mean faster changeovers, fewer micro-stops, or fewer distractions on the line.
Tracking downtime helps you recover lost minutes, which, over time, can add up to hours of extra production without requiring additional headcount or shifts.
Every time the line stops, your costs go up. You’re still paying labor. You’re still using utilities. But you’re not producing anything. Tracking downtime helps you eliminate that waste and produce more with the same resources. The result is lower costs per unit, fewer late orders, and less need for overtime. Not to mention more room to grow.
Whether you’re focused on Lean, OEE, Six Sigma, or just getting the job done better than last week, improvement starts with good data. You can slice the data by shift, line, product, or operator and uncover what’s really driving or stifling your performance. This will allow you to take corrective action with confidence and track whether your improvements are working.
When everyone has access to the same real-time equipment downtime analysis, it becomes easier to collaborate on solving these problems. Operators can flag issues. Maintenance can see recurring failures. Supervisors can spot slowdowns before they snowball. Downtime tracking gives your team a shared language and a shared goal—to keep the line moving.
No matter what sector of manufacturing you operate in, downtime eats into your margins. In prepared foods and beverage manufacturing, for example, downtime tracking helps you respond faster to issues like ingredient shortages or sanitation delays. In consumer products, it can reduce the time lost to frequent changeovers and packaging line resets.
Accurate and real-time data can help you stay ahead of problems, hit your production targets, and keep your team aligned around performance goals.
The success of your machine downtime tracking depends on how you approach data collection. If you’re still using handwritten logs or updating spreadsheets at the end of each shift, you’re not alone—but you’re probably seeing only half of the picture. Manual tracking might give you a rough idea of where time is being lost, but it often misses the details that help you solve the core problem.
With manual downtime tracking, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks:
You might know that a line went down, but not why, or how often it’s really happening.
Automated machine downtime tracking captures every stop the moment it happens. You get real-time visibility into which machines are running, which ones aren’t, and why. With automated tools like Redzone, the #1 connected workforce solution, operators can quickly tag the reason on a tablet, and supervisors see trends unfold as they happen, not hours or days later.
This allows you to:
You’re not just collecting numbers; you’re creating a system your whole team can rely on.
When you consistently track downtime and act on the data, you unlock real performance improvements. You reduce unplanned stops, streamline planned ones, and create a culture where teams know exactly what’s getting in their way and how to fix it.
But tracking is just the beginning. The real impact occurs when those insights are shared in real-time, across shifts and teams, with tools designed for the people who actually run the floor.
With Redzone, your operators can log downtime on the go, add root cause tags, and instantly share context with the rest of the team. Maintenance can prioritize issues based on actual impact, rather than relying on guesswork. And your supervisors get a live view of performance, not a report three days later.
You’re not just collecting data. You’re empowering your team to solve problems faster, communicate more clearly, and improve every shift.
If you’re ready to turn downtime into progress, it’s time to see what Redzone can do.
Machine downtime refers to any period when equipment is not operating as intended, whether that’s due to a breakdown, changeover, maintenance, or any other stoppage. Tracking both planned and unplanned downtime helps you understand where time is being lost and what’s causing it.
The most common causes vary by industry, but typical culprits include equipment failures, supply shortages, changeovers, software issues, and operator-related delays. Even short stops—like clearing a conveyor jam—can add up if they happen frequently. Tracking downtime gives you the visibility to tackle these problems head-on.
Downtime directly impacts the availability component of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). When you track stops in real time and categorize them accurately, you can reduce unplanned downtime, improve changeover speed, and increase uptime. That leads to a stronger OEE score and better overall performance.
Look for a system that captures downtime in real time, makes it easy for operators to log causes, and gives your team clear, actionable reports. Bonus points if it integrates with your existing systems and helps you link downtime to root causes, shift performance, or equipment trends. The goal isn’t just tracking—it’s making that data usable across your entire operation. Compare your options with Redzone, the #1 connected workforce solution.
👉 Book a demo and find out how our connected workforce tools help teams like yours reduce downtime and hit their production goals faster.
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