Large industrial companies lose more than one day of production every month and hundreds of millions of dollars every year due to machine breakdowns. This is the conclusion of a recent report by Senseye, a company specializing in artificial intelligence-driven monitoring of the maintenance status of machines in industrial plants.

The report, entitled 'The True Cost Of Downtime', shows the results of a study of 72 large multinational industrial companies. According to the study, large plants lose an average of 323 production hours per year. The average cost of lost revenue, fines, employee downtime and machine restarts is $532,000 per hour - that's $172 million per plant per year.

It is estimated that Fortune Global 500 industrial companies lose (cumulatively) 3.3 million hours per year due to unplanned machine downtime. The financial cost of these downtimes is calculated at 864 billion US dollars, which corresponds to 8% of their annual turnover.

Alexander Hill, Chief Global Strategist at Senseye, says: "Unplanned machine downtime is the bane of industry. When expensive production lines and machines are down, the company is not making money and these investments start costing money instead of earning it. Costs can easily rise to over $100,000 per hour for large manufacturers in almost any industry."

Unplanned downtime is most prevalent in the automotive industry, where plants lost 29 hours of production per month at an average cost of $1.3 million per hour. Fortune Global 500 automotive manufacturers lose an estimated $557 billion and 414,800 hours per year. 67% of automotive companies told Senseye that predictive maintenance is now a strategic goal.

FMCG companies lose 25 hours per month due to unplanned downtime. This costs 23,600 US dollars per hour. Among the Fortune Global 500, this adds up to 1.5 million hours and a loss of 35 billion US dollars per year. 72% of FMCG companies report that predictive maintenance has become a strategic initiative.

Mining, metals and other heavy industries lose 23 production hours due to machine downtime, at a cost of $187,500 per hour. This equates to 1.2 million unplanned hours of downtime per year, costing the Fortune Global 500 companies in this sector a total of 225 billion US dollars. 60% of companies in heavy industry have made predictive maintenance a strategic priority.

Oil and gas companies suffer 32 unplanned hours of downtime per month. This costs 84 million US dollars per site. In refineries alone, Fortune Global 500 companies lose an estimated 47 billion US dollars due to 213,000 hours of downtime. 82% of respondents in the industry said predictive maintenance was a strategic goal, more than any other industry surveyed.

Senseye's study also shows that more than two-thirds (72%) of large industrial organizations have made predictive maintenance a strategic goal and that one in five (20%) have in-house predictive maintenance teams leading these initiatives.

51% of companies say they already have condition monitoring in place and 87% say they collect at least some of the data that can be used for predictive maintenance.

The figures are the result of 72 online interviews with maintenance, engineering and IT professionals in large automotive, FMCG, heavy industrial and oil & gas companies in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In addition, Senseye estimated the Fortune Global 500 companies' levels of experience with unplanned shutdowns by adding publicly available information on the number of plants of these companies to the results of its study.