The cost of reactive maintenance
Reactive maintenance — fixing things after they break — is the most expensive maintenance strategy. Unplanned downtime costs manufacturers an estimated $50 billion annually worldwide. A single hour of downtime on a production line can cost $10,000 to $250,000 depending on the industry.
Preventive maintenance (scheduled replacements) is better but wasteful. You replace parts that still have life, and you still miss failures that happen between service windows.
How predictive maintenance works
- Vibration sensors — detect bearing wear, imbalance, and misalignment months in advance
- Temperature monitoring — track thermal patterns that indicate degradation
- Current analysis — motor current signatures reveal winding issues and load anomalies
- Oil analysis — particle counts and viscosity trends predict hydraulic and gearbox failures
- ML models — trained on your equipment's baseline, they learn what normal looks like and flag deviations
Integration with work orders
When the platform detects an anomaly, it does not just alert someone. It creates a maintenance work order automatically, assigns it to the right technician, attaches the relevant sensor data, and schedules it during the next planned downtime window. The entire loop — from detection to resolution — is automated.
The best time to fix a machine is before it breaks. The second best time is right now. There is no good third option.