Plastics & rubber sector is 'hardest hit' by unplanned downtime costs

London – The plastics & rubber manufacturing industry is one of two industrial sectors most impacted by unplanned downtime costs, according to ABB.

With per-outage costs of $179,000, plastics & rubber ranked equal with the oil & gas sector in a new global survey conducted by the digital technologies major.

Across all sectors, the survey found that unexpected outages typically cost industrial businesses $125,000 per hour, said Virve Viitanen (pictured), ABB’s global head of customer care & support.

Moreover, 69% of businesses surveyed reported experiencing an unplanned outage every month, ABB’s ‘Value of reliability’ survey report 2023 also found, Viitanen said at a 27 Oct press event in London.

And, she explained, as it usually takes an eight-hour working shift to get an operation back up and running that equates to typical costs of around $1 million per outage.

 “So, on average, companies risk annual costs of $12 million as a direct impact from downtime of equipment,” Viitanen continued.

That, she said, is before considering impacts related to: reputation; financial performance; ability to meet contractual obligations; waste prevention; and loss of repeat business.

The survey also found that 21% of businesses have a run-to-fail approach, 45%, a time-based maintenance strategy; while 33% rely on a condition-based maintenance strategy.

Across all sectors, the outage-per-month figure rises to 80% for businesses that operate a run-to-fail maintenance strategy, according to ABB’s global customer support leader.