Inspection
Work Planning

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Downtime

The period during which an asset, system or process is unavailable to perform its intended function.

Definition

Downtime is the time during which equipment, systems or production facilities are unavailable due to planned maintenance, failures, inspections, shutdowns or other operational interruptions. Downtime may be planned, such as scheduled turnarounds, or unplanned, resulting from equipment failures or unexpected events.

Why It Matters

Downtime is a key operational and reliability metric used to evaluate asset performance, maintenance effectiveness, production losses and overall equipment availability.

In Practice

Downtime is commonly classified as planned or unplanned and is frequently analyzed alongside Availability, MTBF and MTTR to identify improvement opportunities.

Common Misuse

Downtime represents the period when an asset is unavailable, whereas Availability measures the proportion of time the asset is capable of performing its intended function.

Term Details
Synonyms:
Downtime; Equipment Downtime; Production Downtime; Outage Time
Classification:
Reliability Engineering
Concept
Intermediate
Applications

Reliability Engineering; Maintenance & Work Management; Operations.

Where It's Used

Asset performance.; Maintenance planning.; Reliability analysis.; Production reporting.; Operational excellence.

References

IEC 60050-192; IEC 60300

See It In VisualAIM

VisualAIM connects glossary concepts to the asset records, inspection histories, and workflows they describe.

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