Practical Ways to Maximize the Pause During Planned Downtimes
Editor’s Note: For multidisciplinary engineers in the machine design space, this article sheds light on an often overlooked opportunity of maximizing planned downtime to improve machine reliability and operational efficiency. Mark Kingkade, a reliability solutions architect at Waites, explains how leveraging predictive maintenance technologies—using sensors, real-time data and AI—enables timely, informed maintenance actions during these inevitable pauses.
This approach can help avoid costly unplanned breakdowns as well as inform better machine design by highlighting the importance of serviceability, sensor integration and efficient inspection processes. Kingkade also encourages a mindset shift to view downtime not as lost time but as a strategic window for maintenance wins that support production continuity.
Engineers who embrace these insights could be better equipped to design machines that fit into modern smart manufacturing environments, boosting machine longevity, simplifying maintenance and driving greater production efficiency.
All manufacturers understand that, sometimes, a factory needs to shut down. Situated within a complex web of elements, almost anything can disrupt a plant floor, even the weather. During extreme heat days, utility companies might shut off power for an extended period, taking energy-intensive factories offline—sometimes for 12 hours—to reduce strain on the local electrical grid.
While a downtime scenario like this is sporadic, it underscores that disturbances are both unavoidable and unpredictable. But planned downtime presents a window of opportunity to practice proactive maintenance and conduct machine health inspections that might otherwise go unchecked during normal operations.
The key to managing disruption is simple: maximize the pause to reduce unplanned downtime while making the most of inevitable situations. With today’s demand for smarter, faster and better work, proactive maintenance helps facilities prioritize a servicing schedule that keeps machinery running at optimized strength—and production downtimes from changeovers or other short outages are the perfect opportunity to do just that.
While unforeseen upsets can’t always be avoided, downtime doesn’t need to set a facility back. It just requires a shift in mindset and, most importantly, the right tools.
Tapping into the Full Power of Predictive Maintenance
Another strategy to deploy when time may or may not be on the facility’s side is getting ahead of it by monitoring the actual condition of machines and turning real-time vibration data into actionable insights.
Predictive maintenance (PdM), which uses sensors, data and AI to identify potential equipment failures before they happen, is a tool most known for its emergency avoidance capabilities. PdM detects subtle changes in performance—shifts in vibration, temperature and other metrics—that signal wear or malfunction.
With these actionable insights, the goal is for technicians to intervene before a critical breakdown occurs, keeping operations running smoothly and avoiding the costly consequences of surprise downtime. Instead of waiting for something to go wrong, PdM keeps systems in check, ensuring that issues are caught early and resolved with minimal disruption.
When most people think of predictive maintenance, they’re picturing scenarios like the one above—sensors flag an anomaly and technicians find a serious repair that needs to be addressed immediately, resulting in extreme cost-savings and downtime avoidance. That is the power of PdM, but the value goes much further. While keeping unplanned downtime at bay is everybody’s goal, bouts of planned downtime are completely inescapable.
Think of a production line that is temporarily stopped to switch over to a new product size or where the holding tanks are full. These are not breakdowns; they’re normal parts of the production process.
If manufacturers can’t evade these temporary disruptions, they need to use that time for good. Instead of seeing these types of pauses as dead time, technicians need to use them as short, powerful windows to act on maintenance alerts. PdM is the strategy that can help teams do just that.
No Time to Waste: Turning Unused Minutes into Maintenance Wins
While PdM can flag anomalies that indicate critical machine failure, these systems also often surface quick, non-urgent tasks such as “inspect belt tension” or “check hammers for wear.” These inspections don’t require major tools or parts and typically take a few minutes to complete. Other tasks such as “verify fan sheave alignment” or “inspect fan wheel for damage and dirt build up” can take approximately an hour if the direct drive fan doesn’t need major alignment adjustments.
Due to their low criticality, technicians may push off these quick tasks in favor of something more urgent. Neglecting them, however, can eventually lead to a serious failure.
Here’s where the intersection of predictive maintenance and production downtime comes in. The most efficient facilities are using scheduled machine downtime to catch up on maintenance tasks, and on top of that, they’re leveraging predictive maintenance to streamline those efforts. Without PdM technology, most technicians rely on the traditional “walkaround” routine, where technicians follow a fixed route and schedule to manually check machine metrics themselves.
While that long-established method is common, there are significant pitfalls associated with a route-based, walkaround maintenance technique—especially for facilities that want to keep pace with modern-day demands for efficiency. Walkaround routines are notoriously time-consuming and limited in the data they can provide, making the effort not worth the reward.
When metrics are manually measured by humans, data is only available during these scheduled visits, making it difficult to detect changes or failures occurring between inspections. These circumstances become especially disadvantageous for teams trying to make the most out of their production downtimes. With months-old data and tedious routes to walk, it’s possible that a machine is back up and running before technicians even know what they need to look at.
With PdM, wireless monitoring systems continue to track equipment even when employees are not on the shop floor, consistently coming up with recommendations that keep teams both organized and informed. Because the data is often less than 24 hours old, technicians can make educated decisions fast—making the most of their time because they know exactly where to go and exactly what to do.
When teams only have an hour, or even just minutes of downtime to take advantage of, they need to be strategic in their plans. Predictive maintenance is the solution that lets them do just that.
Imagine a machine that is already scheduled for a quick stop. With PdM technology in place, technicians can check their data and see what else in that machine/area can be inspected. And it doesn’t need to be complicated.
Just because technicians are inspecting a flagged anomaly, it doesn’t always mean the problem has to be fixed immediately. If planned downtime is limited, technicians can quickly assess machines, then schedule the physical maintenance for a later date. This data-informed approach enables teams to strategically identify and complete simple, backlogged tasks that could prevent the next breakdown from happening.
Over time, these minor inspections add up to build resilience and protect equipment health. Instead of letting everything pile up, PdM helps technicians stay ahead of the curve, giving them the insights necessary to make every minute count.
From Idle to Intentional
In manufacturing, time is everything, and how you use it determines your success. While no plant can escape operational disruptions entirely, facilities can take advantage of planned downtime to effectively monitor and maintain machine health. In this case, predictive maintenance is more than a tool for avoiding emergencies; it’s a strategy for maximizing efficiency when time is of the essence.
By shifting the mindset around downtime and using real-time data to guide even the smallest inspections, facilities can stay agile, prepared and productive, no matter the circumstances. Whether it’s a 10-min. pause during size changeover or a longer stall due to supply chain delays, PdM helps teams act fast, with purpose and clarity.
Downtime will never disappear completely, so facilities need to change how they respond to it. The next time production needs to take a short pause, don’t see it as lost time; see it as an opportunity to get ahead, one small inspection at a time.
