He continued: "This survey shows that downtime reduction is critical to business' success. And in the future managing downtime must be a board-level priority if UK manufacturing firms are to survive within a globally-competitive market".

The researchers interviewed production directors and maintenance managers from 200 manufacturing companies across the UK and in a range of sectors including food and drink, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and utilities.

Up to 88% of the respondents said that downtime nearly always meant lost production time, whilst more than one fifth of the companies believed that product quality was adversely affected. Despite the recognition of the problem, more than half of those interviewed admitted that insufficient time had been spent assessing the effect of downtime on profitability and 31% said that the issue was not discussed at board level.

An encouraging sign is that 48% believe that downtime is decreasing in their organisation. Companies today are also now more likely to record downtime, with 93% recording periods when machinery or systems are down, compared to 78% in 1996.

Production directors and managers at manufacturing companies are also more likely to recognise the cost to their business of downtime today than ten years ago. In 1996, 67% of respondents calculated the cost of downtime, that figure has now increased to 86%.

The key factors seen to prevent downtime reduction were a shortage of skilled operators (43%), followed by unreliable equipment (39%) and insufficient planning of maintenance (33%).

Copies of the survey report are available from JBP Public Relations.

Tel. 0117 907 3400 Idhammar Systems is a global provider of computerised systems specifically designed to improve manufacturing efficiency, and this latest research repeats a similar study, which was commissioned by the company ten years ago.