Nearly 91% of reliability and maintenance practitioners have approved, implemented or integrated a new automation investment knowing their team or facility wasn't fully prepared or equipped to maintain it, according to MultiSensor AI’s The Uptime Economy: 2026 Report.
What’s more, nearly half (49%) say this has happened more than once.
"The automation business case almost never includes the plan to keep it running," says Asim Akram, CEO of MultiSensor AI. "Ninety-one percent of the leaders we surveyed knew their team was not ready and moved forward anyway. That is not a technology gap. It is a planning gap, and it shows up two years later as unplanned downtime."
Key takeaways:
· Most (99%) reliability and maintenance practitioners are confident their facility can catch early degradation of assets before it leads to failure, with 62% very confident.
· Yet, 82% of practitioners say their team has dismissed a sensor alert that turned out to be a real asset failure.
· 83% of practitioners have experienced a failure that, in hindsight, showed warning signs they missed or deprioritized. Nearly one-third (31%) say this has happened more than once.
· Only 10% of practitioners continuously monitor all of their critical assets in real time, 24/7, while two-thirds (66%) monitor periodically, on a scheduled or calendar-based interval. Nearly all respondents (98%) have at least one asset that represents a true single point of failure capable of halting operations.
· 86% of practitioners have taken a critical asset out of service for replacement or major repair, only to determine later that it had significantly more usable life remaining. 27% say it has happened more than once.
- 80% of respondents say their facility experienced six or more unplanned downtime events affecting fulfillment, sortation or distribution operations in the past 12 months.
- Unplanned downtime events have increased compared with three years ago, according to 36% of respondents.
- 95% of VP-level respondents say the potential financial impact of a major downtime event would match (55%) or exceed (40%) their annual automation investment at a facility.
- Most facilities (55%) invested $5 to $25 million in automation technology over the past three years, while more than a third (35%) invested $25 million to $100 million during the same period.
- Nearly two-thirds (64%) of VPs say their facility does not track uptime at the executive or board level.
- 35% of all respondents say a lean workforce and not enough skilled technicians is a top barrier to improving uptime.
