How downtime cost is calculated
The true cost of downtime is far more than the repair bill. This calculator adds the three biggest components: lost production value (units per hour multiplied by gross margin and downtime hours), idle labor (paid-but-stopped workers), and other recovery costs such as expedited parts and overtime. Multiply by how often it happens and the annual figure is usually eye-opening.
Knowing this number turns preventive maintenance from a cost into an investment with a clear return: if a breakdown costs thousands and happens several times a year, a PM program that prevents most of them pays for itself many times over.