When it comes to commercial laundry maintenance, there are two words that cause plant managers a significant amount of stress.
Unplanned downtime.
They're a scary couple of words ... and they should be.
The thing is, they should really only be scary if you don't have a plan to mitigate it. 
In this article, we'll review:
The reality is, things happen. In most cases, even the most robust of commercial laundry maintenance plans won't prevent 100% of unplanned downtime. When it happens, you have to work swiftly to assess the problem, troubleshoot and test to see if your solutions have resolved the issue.
If you're a commercial laundry plant manager, the headaches unplanned downtime can cause are obvious (more on those a little later on).
But what about the hard numbers? As we always say at Spindle, you can't assess what you don't measure.
So, a few numbers about unplanned downtime to put everything into context. (We should note, however, that the cost of unplanned downtime varies by company size and industry vertical. These numbers are simply meant as rough estimates of the financial impact of downtime.)
A report by Atlassian cites a 2014 Gartner study, which set the average cost of downtime at $5,600 per minute. Meanwhile, a 2016 Ponemon Institute study raised that number to $9,000 per minute.
The article notes prominent multimillion-dollar downtime incidents at behemoths like Apple, Delta Airlines and Facebook. As a commercial laundry plant manager, you probably won't be facing downtime costs at those levels. Even still, the report notes that for small businesses, the impact of downtime can range from $137 to $427 per minute, which is still significant and can add up fast.
In order to truly understand the impact of downtime at your plant, you should always be looking at the data. Whether you use a software tool like Spindle or something else, assessing the cost of your unplanned downtime incidents can help you understand the power of a preventive commercial laundry maintenance plan. How much did you lose in throughput? How much did you have to pay in overtime? How much did you have to pay for any emergency maintenance costs, like labor or new equipment parts?
But if you're thinking, "I don't really know the true cost of downtime at my plant." The truth is, you're not alone. According to IIoT World, over 80% of companies can't calculate their true downtime costs correctly. So, on the bright side, if you are able to do that, you're ahead of the game.
Once you run those numbers, it becomes clear why a robust commercial laundry maintenance plan is your first line of defense between you and runaway unplanned costs.
As we'll summarize below, the impact of unplanned downtime doesn't only manifest in the form of lost revenues, as the Atlassian report notes:
According to independent data protection and security research firm, Ponemon, the largest share of downtime cost is business disruption—a category that includes reputational damage and customer churn. Revenue loss took second place in the firm’s research. And the third largest financial pain associated with incidents was end-user productivity.
Unplanned downtime in commercial laundry plants can significantly disrupt operations, leading to financial losses, production delays, and potential damage to customer relationships. The main impacts include:
Loss of Revenue: Commercial laundry plants operate on tight schedules to serve businesses like hotels, hospitals, and restaurants. Any downtime halts production, leading to delayed deliveries and possible loss of contracts.
Increased Operational Costs: Downtime often leads to increased labor costs due to the need for overtime or additional staff to catch up on lost productivity. Emergency repairs also tend to be more costly than scheduled maintenance.
Equipment Damage: Continuous operation without planned maintenance can lead to sudden breakdowns, which may cause extensive damage to machinery. This damage can require costly repairs or complete replacement of equipment, further extending downtime.
Customer Dissatisfaction: Delays in laundry services can damage customer relationships, particularly in industries like hospitality and healthcare where clean linens are critical to daily operations.
These factors highlight the critical need for predictive maintenance and continuous monitoring systems in laundry plants to minimize the risk of costly disruptions.
Software applications, like Spindle, can serve as your third eye in the plant. By leveraging technology to compile historical data and alert you when equipment is due for preventive maintenance, you can get ahead of a lot of problems before they start.
Using data, Spindle makes it easy for you to see where problem areas are in your plant.
As I mentioned above, a strong commercial laundry maintenance program is your first line of defense. Without one, you will, without question, struggle with:
But it doesn't have to be that way.
With an eye on data, software tools like Spindle can provide the real-time insights you need to stop many problems before they start.
As a result, you'll have happy managers, happy employees and happy customers. It's a win-win-win.
Want to learn more about how you can win the fight against unplanned downtime?
Download our free e-book to learn more about how you can use Spindle to boost your commercial laundry maintenance program and reduce downtime.
