How Maintenance Software Can Fix Manufacturers’ $50 Billion Problem

Industrial manufacturers lose $50 billion every year to unplanned downtime, and that number is only increasing as energy and labor costs rise. In fact, a 2024 Siemens paper reported that every hour of downtime for a large automotive plant costs a staggering $2.3 million an hour — twice as much as it did in 2019. For those manufacturers in the Heavy Industry sector, downtime costs four times what it did five years ago. 

So the question on every manufacturer’s mind remains: How do I reduce downtime without affecting my bottom line?

Enter maintenance management software.  

Shifting From Reactive to Proactive Maintenance Reduces Downtime 

Implementing a maintenance management software can help maintenance teams more easily shift from a reactive to a proactive maintenance approach, which is exactly what you want if your main goal is to reduce downtime.

After all, organizations that rely heavily on reactive maintenance instead of being more proactive experience 3.3 times more downtime, according to a 2020 report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Additionally, these organizations reported 16 times more defects, 2.8 times more lost sales due to defects, 2.4 times more lost sales due to maintenance-related delays and 4.89 times more inventory increases due to different types of maintenance-related issues. 

Manual Maintenance vs. Maintenance Software Approach

Let’s say you currently use a more manual way of tracking your maintenance process. Whether it’s through pen and paper or spreadsheets, there are several ways that this analog approach can be inefficient. Here’s a look at how a manual maintenance approach compares to a maintenance software approach:

How Software Helps Streamline Your Maintenance Strategy

Now that we know some of the key differences between tracking maintenance manually versus digitally, let’s discuss some of the key ways maintenance management software can help streamline your maintenance approach:

• Reduces equipment downtime: If you’re shifting from a reactive maintenance strategy to a more proactive one, you’re able to plan out your maintenance better. Unplanned maintenance can result in full days or even weeks with a pause on production. However, a proactive approach gives you the ability to plan out when to perform inspections and replace parts, resulting in less overall equipment downtime.  
• Maximizes equipment lifetime: Maintenance software gives you a holistic view of your most crucial assets. It can help you see how often your equipment requires maintenance, what work is being done to maintain it and how effective that work is. This information can help you improve asset performance, directly impacting your equipment’s longevity.
• Decreases maintenance costs: Reactive maintenance is unpredictable, which means you’re likely to see higher costs for hurried turnaround requests and labor overtime. Moving to a more proactive maintenance approach gives you more control over your budget.
• Helps teams prove their value: By tracking your maintenance digitally, you’ll have access to real-time data that can help prove the value of your maintenance department, just like Coast Customer Matt Butler did for the City of Dallas in Oregon.
• Improves team communication: Maintenance software allows for in-app communication as well as messaging within work orders, meaning fewer questions are left unanswered. Plus, you can attach documents and upload procedural documents for enhanced resources.

Maintenance Software Users See 30% Decrease in Costs

Organizations that use maintenance software report both an increase in efficiency and a decrease in maintenance costs — a win-win for manufacturers. For instance, plants that implemented software, predictive maintenance programs and sensors now lose an average of 27 hours per month to unplanned downtime, down from 39 hours in 2019, according to the 2024 Siemens paper. That’s a 31 percent increase in equipment uptime as a result of taking a more digitized approach to maintenance.

With this in mind, it’s no wonder that maintenance management software users report a 10 to 30 percent decrease in total maintenance costs on average.

How Coast Can Help

So, why Coast? Most cloud-based maintenance management software offer the same key features: asset management, work order tracking, preventive maintenance scheduling and mobile apps to use out in the field. But Coast takes it a step further by allowing maintenance teams to create additional customizable workflows. The software’s drag-and-drop features and customizable fields and modules allows you to get your maintenance management system set up quickly without the need for technical guidance. 

This customization is key if you’re looking for both ease of use and quick team adoption. It’s exactly why 17 percent of organizations complained about insufficient customization features in their current maintenance management systems. Instead of adapting your organization’s operations to fit a maintenance software, the system should meet your unique use case and needs instead. 

Take it from Coast Customer Lisa Bosworth, manager of quality and continuous improvement at Canton, Ohio-based Solmet Group manufacturing company. She says, “Coast is very user-friendly, and the company is very responsive to development and improvement. When we’ve needed specific features, Coast helped create fields or search options and worked on continuous development of its software to meet our needs. As a result, we’ve been able to optimize our maintenance scheduling and decrease equipment downtime.”

Are you looking to streamline your maintenance approach? Check out Coast today for a free trial or enterprise asset management pricing!