EQUIPMENT RELIABILITY METRIC

3.4 UNSCHEDULED DOWNTIME

Published on April 16, 2009
Revised on August 3, 2016

DEFINITION
This metric is the amount of time an asset is not capable of running due to unscheduled repairs
(e.g., repairs not on the finalized weekly maintenance schedule). See Figure 2.

OBJECTIVES
This metric allows evaluation of the total amount of time the asset has not been capable of
running due to unscheduled repair work. The metric can be used to understand the impact of
unscheduled work on capacity and maintenance productivity in order to minimize downtime.

FORMULA
Unscheduled Downtime = Sum of Asset Downtime Not Identified on the Weekly Schedule.

COMPONENT DEFINITIONS
No Feedstock or Raw Materials
The time that an asset is not scheduled to be in service due to a lack of feedstock or raw
material.

Total Available Time

Annual Basis: 365 days/year x 24 hours/day = 8760 hours per year (Note: The addition of one
more day per year must be made for leap year.) Daily Basis: 24 hours

Unscheduled Downtime
The time an asset is down for repairs or modifications that are not on the weekly maintenance
schedule.

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Weekly Schedule
The list of maintenance work to be done in the week. It is usually finalized three to four days
before the start of the work week.

QUALIFICATIONS
1. Time Basis: Weekly, monthly and yearly
2. This metric is used by plant and corporate managers for improvement initiatives, capital
investment justification and asset rationalization. The metric can also be used to identify
latent capacity.
3. Figure 1 includes examples of unscheduled downtime causes. How an individual
company categorizes unscheduled downtime is at their discretion.
4. Downtime will vary by industry. Caution must be used when comparing values across
industry sectors.
5. If downtime is required, the downtime should be scheduled such that outages can be
planned.
6. Every effort should be made to avoid unscheduled downtime.

SAMPLE CALCULATION
For a given asset in a month, the downtime that was not identified on the weekly schedule
included 20 hours of repair work and 5 hours due to a lightning strike on the power line feeding
the plant.

Unscheduled Downtime = Sum of Asset Downtime Not Identified on the Weekly Schedule
Unscheduled Downtime = Repair Time + Power Outage Time
Unscheduled Downtime = 20 hours + 5 hours = 25 hours

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 Total Available Time (365 days x 24 hours per day)

Idle Scheduled
Availability

Scheduled Hours of Production

Time Downtime
Unscheduled
Uptime Hours of Actual Production
Downtime

Best Production Rate

Speed

Speed
Actual Production
Losses

Actual Production
Quality

"First Time
Pass" Quality
Saleable Losses
Production

Figure 1. Overall Equipment Effectiveness Timeline

OEE can also be expressed as a percentage. For a 30 day month:

Unscheduled Downtime (%) = [25 hrs. / (30 days × 24 hrs./day)] ×100

Unscheduled Downtime (%) = (25 hrs. / 720 hrs.) × 100 = 3.5 %

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 Total Available Time

Available to Run Total Downtime

Scheduled Unscheduled
Uptime Idle Time
Downtime Downtime

Examples of Idle Examples of Scheduled Examples of Unscheduled Downtime

Time Downtime
No demand Scheduled repairs Unscheduled repairs
Not scheduled for PM/PdM External factors
production Turnarounds No raw material
Set-up No feed stock

Figure 2. Time Element Chart

BEST-IN-CLASS TARGET VALUE

SMRP’s Best Practices Committee research indicates that best-in-class values for this metric are
highly variable by industry vertical and type of facility. SMRP recommends that organizations
become involved in trade associations within their industry vertical, as these groups often
publish such data about their industry. SMRP also encourages plants to use this metric to help
manage the maintenance management process. Combined with information from other metrics
and by tracking and trending this metric, plants will gain useful information to help make
improvements to plant maintenance and reliability programs.

CAUTIONS
There are no cautions identified at this time.

HARMONIZATION
This metric has not been harmonized with European standard EN 15341: Maintenance
Indicators.

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REFERENCES
Approved by consensus of SMRP Best Practice Committee.

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