This may feel like a cop-out, but the honest answer is there isn’t one. This is because the true cost of unplanned ELAU PacDrive downtime can vary significantly depending on the site, its size and production output. 

To put this into perspective, consider the scale of FMCG production. A single canning line can produce up to 120,000 units per hour, whilst Mars’ Slough factory produces nearly three million Mars bars per day. At that scale, incident costs and hourly losses are only part of the story. 

The true impact of downtime caused by equipment failure can extend far beyond the immediate repair, affecting production schedules, recovery time, product availability, customer fulfilment and the wider business.

As a result, instead of asking: 

“What does downtime cost on average?” 

The better question is: 

“What does this line lose for every hour it is stopped, and what additional costs does this specific incident trigger?” 

Why Traditional Downtime Calculations Often Fall Short 

The temptation is to calculate downtime using three familiar figures: the hourly labour cost, the engineer’s invoice and the cost of any replacement component. 

However, whilst these matter, they can miss: 

• production value interrupted and contribution which cannot be recovered 

• scrap, work in progress and packaging loss 

• disrupted labour and overtime needed to recover production 

• specialist support, replacement parts and urgent logistics 

• restart and stabilisation time 

• downstream disruption, delayed deliveries and customer consequences 

These will vary according to the site and circumstances of the breakdown. 

Unplanned downtime can therefore affect far more than engineering, extending into production, quality, finance and commercial operations. 

Worked Example: One Hour to Repair, 2.5 Hours of Production Loss 

The example below uses a high-speed line rate to show the scale more realistically. All commercial values are illustrative; the real figures should come from the manufacturer’s own production, finance and maintenance data.

The Hard Number 

Production value interrupted: £150,000 

120,000 units × £0.50 × 2.5 hours. 

This shows the value of production flow affected – not automatic lost profit. 

Estimated direct incident cost: £17,700 

If 60% of the £150,000 interrupted production can be recovered, £60,000 remains unrecovered. At an illustrative 18% contribution margin, £10,800 of contribution is at risk. 

Adding £6,900 of scrap, labour, specialist support, parts, logistics and recovery overtime gives an estimated direct event cost of £17,700. 

Why show both figures? 

£150,000 demonstrates the scale of production affected. £17,700 estimates the direct financial consequence. 

Treating the entire £150,000 as lost profit would overstate the event. Looking only at the engineer and replacement part would significantly understate it. 

Why Recovery Time Changes the Arithmetic 

Using the same illustrative production value of £60,000 per hour: 

The commercial objective is therefore not simply to repair the fault. 

It is to reduce the time between the first fault and the first stable, saleable product. 

So what determines how quickly you get there? 

Diagnose. Resolve. Monitor. 

In practice, responding to a breakdown comes down to three stages:

Step	What	How
Diagnose	Identify what has gone wrong, where the issue is and what should be checked first.	Use OEM diagnostics, machine data, specialist knowledge and tools such as Machine Analyser to turn raw fault information into something actionable.
Resolve	Once the problem is understood, determine whether it needs to be corrected, repaired or replaced.	Apply the right engineering knowledge and machine understanding. If hardware has failed, you also need the correct compatible spare.
Monitor	Confirm the solution has worked and identify whether the issue or underlying condition returns.	Use manual checks, condition monitoring and machine data to identify recurring faults, trends or developing problems.

1. Diagnose – Your First Line of Defence 

At 4am, when a production line stops unexpectedly, the first challenge is not replacing a component. 

It is answering three basic questions: 

What is the fault? 
Where is it? 
What should we do next? 

Without those answers, engineers can quickly find themselves guessing, swapping components or escalating an issue before they fully understand it. 

This is where good diagnostics become the first line of defence. 

PacDrive systems contain valuable information including fault codes, error records, axis information and operating data. The challenge is turning that information into something an engineer can use quickly. 

Machine Analyser® is designed to help do exactly that by showing the fault, identifying where it is occurring and helping guide the next diagnostic steps. 

That can be particularly valuable during night shifts, weekends or any situation where the most experienced PacDrive engineer is not standing beside the machine. 

Instead of starting with: 

“The machine has stopped.” 

The aim is to move quickly towards: 

“This is the fault, this is where it is occurring, and this is what we need to investigate next.” 

That does not remove the need for engineering knowledge. It simply gives the engineer a much stronger starting point. 

And where a problem is intermittent, the historical data becomes valuable too. 

A controller may only retain a finite number of recent records. If a fault has appeared periodically over days or weeks, older evidence can disappear. 

Longer-term machine data can therefore help show whether an apparently isolated event is actually part of a recurring pattern. 

The immediate data helps you respond to the breakdown. The historical data helps you understand the wider story. 

2. Resolve – Do You Know What to Do, and Do You Have What You Need? 

Once the problem has been identified, someone still needs to resolve it. 

That requires knowledge. 

An engineer needs to understand what the error means, which part of the machine it relates to and what should be checked next. 

The same type of fault can mean different things depending on the application. A problem on a pick-and-place mechanism may require a different approach from a similar fault on a conveyor or belt axis. 

The diagnosis gives you direction. Machine and PacDrive knowledge determine what happens next. 

The solution may be a mechanical adjustment, wiring repair, parameter change, software intervention or component replacement. 

And if hardware needs replacing, another question immediately follows: 

Do you have the correct spare? 

With PacDrive, simply having a drive or motor on the shelf does not necessarily mean you can restart the machine. Hardware compatibility, firmware, parameters, backups and configuration can all matter. 

That is why spares planning is not simply about having stock. 

It is about having the right, compatible and tested part for the equipment that matters most. 

3. Monitor – Did You Fix the Problem or Just Reset It? 

Getting the machine running again is important. 

But it does not necessarily mean the underlying issue has disappeared. 

This is particularly true with intermittent faults. 

After an intervention, monitoring helps establish whether the fix has genuinely worked, whether the same fault starts to return or whether another pattern begins to emerge. 

This creates a useful cycle: 

Diagnose → Resolve → Monitor 

And the monitoring data collected today can become valuable diagnostic information tomorrow. 

In that sense, condition monitoring is not only about trying to predict failures. 

It also creates better information for the next breakdown, helping engineers understand what the machine was doing before the problem occurred. 

So, What Is an Hour of ELAU PacDrive Downtime Worth on Your Line? 

There is no universal answer. 

What matters is the value passing through the machine, how much production can be recovered and how quickly you can move from failure back to stable production. 

Once you understand that value, the business case for diagnostics, engineering knowledge, training, compatible spares and condition monitoring becomes much easier to assess. 

The question changes from: 

“What does this support, spare or monitoring system cost?” 

to: 

“What is one additional hour of downtime worth?” 

For us, reducing that exposure comes back to four simple questions: 

Can you see what is wrong? 
Do you know what to do? 
Do you have what you need to fix it? 
Can you see whether the problem is coming back? 

That is ultimately how you reduce the time between the first fault and the first stable, saleable product — and reduce the likelihood of being caught by the same issue again. 

All financial examples are illustrative and should be replaced with the manufacturer’s own operational and financial data.