When you think of downtime, you may start thinking about a few things that could include lost productivity, a majority of your workforce standing around, and missed deadlines. There are more negative effects that carry as much weight. Let’s discuss some of them.
The human toll of downtime
The downtime can have a toll on the people working in your company. The people in your organization who drive results maintain a sense of pride in what they do. They are well-aware of their targets, and they fully understand the importance of hitting them.
By beginning to experience downtime, you may start to think that you are letting your employees down. Those people maintain their performances due to their morale, which erodes due to the downtime. It can result in those employees considering working somewhere else.
Overtime due to downtime
Sometimes, you may have to work on weekends and extended shifts to meet high demands. That’s when you might start thinking that you are falling behind.
It gets even worse when the downtime occurs. This downtime may be due to poorly maintained machinery or other technical issues. Whichever the problem is, the downtime puts you in a disastrous situation.
Measures that you take to counter the problem that caused downtime can be costly for sure, but you are also going to have to pay your employees for the overtime work they will do to make up for the loss of work resulted due to the downtime.
Having to ask your team members to come to the office on Saturday to run those lines instead of spending time with their families is going to frustrate them a bit, which will not be much beneficial for your company in the long run.
Downtime effects on packaging machinery
When a packaging machine goes down, the immediate action that you can take is starting up another line, or split labor up between other lines. You may wonder if these lines would perform well if additional labor works on these. The lines will undoubtedly start losing their efficiency, which can lead to quality defects.
Rework and scrap
Rework results in you paying twice as much to prepare the same packaging. You will lose materials and labor to create the finished good. The mounting up of scrape and rework will lead you to need to stop the line and reassign labor to get the job done.
How to prevent downtime
Taking a few measures can help you steer clear of having to deal with downtime. It is crucial to pay attention to preventative maintenance, which can reduce downtime to a bare minimum. On top of everything, this maintenance will keep your machinery in the best working condition, which can help you continually hit your KPIs.