Unplanned Downtime Costs U.S. Manufacturers up to $207M: Study

New survey results from Fluke Corporation reveals that more than half (55%) of U.S. manufacturers have been hit by unplanned downtime in the past year, reaching as much as $207 million of capital impact per week.

“Our research paints a sobering picture: manufacturers are caught in a cycle where downtime eats directly into competitiveness, and too many are stuck with fragmented fixes,” says Parker Burke, group president. “The data makes clear that the frequency, duration, and cost of downtime expose systemic vulnerabilities in maintenance and reliability strategies. What once was viewed, as an operational inconvenience has become a risk to enterprise value. Without a clear path to scale digital investments, manufacturers' efforts risk being spread too thin to deliver meaningful resilience or return. The findings underscore the urgent need for manufacturers to rethink reliability not as a maintenance issue, but as a boardroom priority critical to growth, competitiveness, and customer trust.”

Key takeaways:

·        The research, conducted by Censuswide, shows that nearly half of U.S. survey participants reported 6-10 incidents each week; almost one in five (19%) face 11-20 incidents weekly. At an average cost of $400,000 per hour, a single incident can equal up to $13.8 million in losses, or the equivalent of powering about 820 average factories for a week, 190 for a month, or one for nearly 16 years.

·        The impact is then compounded by duration, with 45% of respondents saying outages last up to 12 hours, while a further 15% experience incidents up to 72 hours.

·        At an average cost of $1.7 million per hour, a single incident can reach up to $42.6 million in losses: the energy equivalent of powering 2,500 average manufacturing facilities for a week, or a single factory for nearly 50 years. These findings indicate that downtime is a recurring operational reality and a board-level risk to profitability and resilience.

·        On a global level, the risks are more acute within large enterprises, among organizations with more than 50,000 employees, 40% report experiencing 11–20 downtime incidents each week, and half (50%) endure up to 72 hours per incident.

·        The findings show that U.S. manufacturers are scattering digital investments across multiple solutions to build resilience, including predictive maintenance (12%), digital twins (12%), and condition monitoring (13%).