What Is Planned Downtime? (And How to Calculate It)

Planned downtime is a maintenance KPI for calculating the expected amount of time in which a piece of equipment will be intentionally non-operational. When a planned pause in production occurs to inspect, maintain or upgrade machinery, this maintenance metric paints a clear picture of how long operations will be paused. 

For example, let’s say your facility operates using a conveyor belt. Your predictive maintenance tools suggest that the belt needs to be replaced, so you have opted to be proactive and pause production time to install a new belt. 

Using the planned downtime metric, you’ll be able to calculate the exact amount of time production will be paused in order to replace the conveyor belt. Read on to learn how this scheduled approach to regular maintenance activities can positively impact your maintenance team’s bottom line.

Planned vs. Unplanned Downtime: What’s the Difference?

When factoring equipment downtime into your production processes, you need to fully understand the two different types of downtime and how they impact profitability. 

Planned Downtime 

Planned downtime is expected. This pause in production occurs intentionally to perform:

• Routine maintenance: Certain machinery needs consistent updates, inspections and repairs as part of a routine maintenance strategy.
• Planned equipment upgrades or turnovers: This involves evaluating performance and/or replacing outdated machinery.
• Scheduled system or software updates: Equipment may need to go offline to ensure functionality, security and/or compatibility with tech upgrades.

Unplanned Downtime

Unplanned downtime is unexpected. This downtime event occurs when:

• Equipment breaks down: If a part or machine breaks, production needs to pause until the necessary parts and technicians are available to repair it.
• Connectivity issues occur: Network outages can disrupt systems from functioning or communicating properly. 
• Power outages: If electricity is lost, your facility needs to use backup systems or wait until power is restored. 
• Human error happens: If machinery is used improperly or maintenance/repairs are performed incorrectly, equipment can become inoperable.

Planned Downtime vs. Scheduled Downtime

Understanding the nuances between planned and scheduled downtime is key to maintaining operational efficiency. While both maintenance terms are often used interchangeably, they represent two unique approaches to managing stoppages in production.

While planned downtime involves creating a maintenance strategy for future work (work that needs to happen every 100 hours, for example), scheduled downtime involves scheduling when downtime will happen and who will oversee it, but it can technically be a result of planned or unplanned downtime. For instance, if a machine breaks unexpectedly, you will schedule it to be repaired when the needed part comes in tomorrow. 

Maintenance Strategies Used to Address Planned Downtime

Planned downtime needs to be performed as efficiently as possible to prevent production delays and keep operations moving as scheduled. By using the right maintenance techniques and technologies, you can limit unscheduled downtime and perform maintenance as cost effectively as possible. 

Here are a few types of maintenance you can methodically work into your operating procedures:

Run to Failure Maintenance 

Run to failure maintenance (RTF) is a reactive approach to maintenance. Equipment is intentionally left operating until it breaks down or fails completely rather than routinely maintained with planned downtime. This approach reduces the amount of planned downtime needed and often makes more sense when the cost to maintain or repair a machine is more expensive than replacing it altogether or if the equipment is cheap, unserviceable or non-critical.  

Preventive Maintenance

A preventive maintenance approach proactively addresses small or potential issues before they worsen, break down, turn into costly repairs or a long-term shutdown. There are two approaches to preventive maintenance:

• Time-based maintenance (TBM): This involves performing regular inspections of machinery and replacing parts at scheduled intervals, regardless of how much the equipment is being used. TBM is an effective technique for maintaining the most critical systems in your operation to ensure that core parts are serviced or replaced before getting worn out.
• Usage-based maintenance: This involves performing service based on maintenance metrics such as hours of operation and production cycles. This technique ensures that planned downtime for maintenance only happens as needed by prioritizing repairs or inspections on assets undergoing higher wear and tear to optimize resource allocation and improve uptime.

Both of these approaches optimize planned downtime by striking a balance between production requirements and maintenance needs to enhance equipment reliability, extend equipment lifespan and manage maintenance costs.

Condition-Based Maintenance 

Condition-based maintenance is a technique that typically involves pairing a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and sensors for real-time monitoring to determine exactly when equipment needs to be serviced. This approach mitigates unnecessary downtime and brings down any preventive maintenance costs while still catching issues early before they turn into equipment failures.

Predictive Maintenance

This technique also uses advanced predictive maintenance analytics to forecast when equipment breakdowns or failure are likely to occur by using historical data. With this predictive approach, you can promote operational efficiency, reduce maintenance costs and extend equipment life spans without excessive downtime. 

Benefits of Planned Downtime

Choosing a proactive maintenance approach (rather than a reactive one) comes with serious benefits and is generally the recommended option for production facilities looking to mitigate costs and unexpected downtime.

Key benefits of planned downtime include: 

• Decreases total equipment downtime: By pausing production to inspect equipment and repair parts, you’re preventing larger, unexpected failures from occurring, especially ones that are a result of unplanned downtime.
• Increases equipment life expectancy: Performing routine maintenance tasks like lubricating joints and replacing parts will ensure that you maximize the lifespan of your most important machinery. 
• Reduces costs: Catching and addressing small issues during planned maintenance is much cheaper than major repairs and/or extended unplanned downtime from an equipment failure.
• Ensures parts and labor are available: Scheduling maintenance in advance ensures that you have the maintenance workers and required inventory available to complete the tasks properly. 
• Minimizes impact on production: Since this type of downtime is prescheduled, you can factor it into your overall manufacturing process and production schedules to make sure orders are still completed on time.

How to Calculate Planned Downtime

To calculate the planned downtime KPI the right way, follow these simple steps: 

1. Determine a planned operating time for a given period — for example, equipment should be operational 10 hours a day for 24 days a month = 240 hours per month
2. Track the amount of planned downtime for the month in hours
3. Divide the planned downtime from the planned operating time
4. Multiply by 100 to get the percentage

Planned Downtime Formula: [Time Equipment Is Down / Planned Operating Time] * 100 = Planned Downtime %

On average, overall equipment downtime should be 10 percent or less.

Planned Downtime Calculation Example

Suppose you have 10 hours of planned downtime on a conveyor belt in a manufacturing

plant in a given month, and its planned operating time is the above 240 hours a month. No other downtime is recorded for the month. 

The calculation would be: [10 / 240] * 100 = 4.167%

How to Track Planned Downtime With a CMMS

A CMMS like Coast makes it easy to schedule and manage planned downtime. Here are a few key ways you can use this software to proactively inspect and maintain your equipment:

• Use historical data to make informed decisions: Coast tracks all of your historical maintenance data in simplified reports, giving you the context you need to schedule downtime accordingly to preserve the condition of your equipment, replace parts and prevent unexpected breakdowns. 
• Schedule maintenance techs: As you schedule planned downtime, you can assign technicians to various projects from a mobile app. Once the work order is assigned, the maintenance technician will receive a notification specifying the project, date and time, and detailed procedural documents.
• Record every inspection and repair: When technicians complete any planned or unplanned maintenance, they will submit a detailed summary via Coast that is automatically pulled into the cloud and accessible for company leadership. This data is pulled into your analytics and can be used to strategize around future planned downtime scheduling.

The time is now to mitigate downtime and improve operational efficiency. Get started with Coast for free today!