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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Shop Floor and Maintenance

Downtime

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

/ˈdaʊntaɪm/nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, downtime means: Time when a machine or line is not producing even though it is scheduled to, because of a breakdown, a changeover, missing material or another problem.

In Turkish: duruş süresi, duruş, plansız duruş

How it is used

One of the most tracked numbers on the shop floor. Teams record, log, track and reduce downtime, and separate planned downtime (maintenance, breaks) from unplanned downtime (breakdowns). Reasons are usually coded so they can be analyzed.

Example sentences

  1. We had 3.5 hours of unplanned downtime on the press line last week.

  2. Please log every stop longer than five minutes on the downtime sheet.

Common collocations

  • unplanned downtime
  • planned downtime
  • reduce downtime
  • downtime reason
  • log downtime
  • OEEShort for overall equipment effectiveness: a percentage that shows how well a machine is used, calculated as availability × performance × quality.
  • preventive maintenancePlanned maintenance done at regular intervals, such as cleaning, lubricating and replacing worn parts, to stop breakdowns before they happen. Often shortened to PM.
  • TPMShort for total productive maintenance: an approach in which operators and maintenance staff share responsibility for keeping equipment in top condition, aiming for no breakdowns, defects or accidents.
  • setup timeThe time needed to prepare a machine or line to produce a different product, from the last good part of one job to the first good part of the next.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Shop Floor and Maintenance

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