Home / Magazine / Cost-effectiveness

How do downtimes change the cost-effectiveness of maintenance work?

How do downtimes change the cost-effectiveness of maintenance work? In many production businesses, the most expensive item in a cleaning or coating removal job is not “processing” but “system out of operation”. Even an inexpensive external process can become expensive in economic terms if dismantling, transport and waiting time extend the interruption to production.

By the Beamlux editorial team Updated 20 August 2026 Reading time 11–13 minutes

For maintenance work, therefore, the active working time alone should not be measured. What is relevant is the complete time window between the production stop and a successful restart.

For certain tasks, laser-based processes can be used on site with mobile equipment. Whether that results in an economic advantage, however, has to be calculated for the specific system process.

Why downtime is a cost type in its own right

A production machine normally creates value as long as it is producing.

If it is stopped because of maintenance work, that value is lost, at least in part.

How high the economic burden actually is depends greatly on the business.

On a secondary machine that is not fully utilised, an hour may have hardly any consequences.

On a central bottleneck system, the same hour can be very expensive.

There is therefore no universal price for machine downtime.

It has to be derived from the production system of the particular company.

Possible effects are:

lost production
Staff without productive work
Late delivery
Overtime to catch up
Production rescheduling
Contractual consequences
Bottlenecks in downstream processes

This makes it understandable why a supposedly more expensive maintenance method can be more cost-effective if it significantly reduces the downtime.

Distinguishing processing time and downtime

Suppose a component requires two hours of external processing.

That does not mean the machine is at a standstill for only two hours.

The following may also be necessary:

Cooling down
Dismantling
Packing
Transport
Waiting time at the service provider
Return transport
Assembly
Alignment
Inspection
Restart

Two hours of processing can thus turn into one or more days of process interruption.

Another process may need three hours of active work but can be carried out directly on the installed component, or close to it.

In that case it can be more cost-effective for the system as a whole.

The decisive measurement is therefore:

Time between the last good part before the maintenance work and the first good part after it.

What an hour of downtime can cost

A simple calculation can start from the lost contribution margin.

If a system produces goods with a particular economic contribution per hour, that figure can serve as a starting point.

Further costs may be added.

An example model:

lost contribution margin

plus

additional staff costs

plus

knock-on costs of production rescheduling

plus, where applicable,

delivery or contract costs

economic burden per hour of downtime

This figure does not have to be accurate to the last cent.

Even a sound order of magnitude can change the choice of process.

If an hour of downtime is significantly more expensive than the surface work itself, for example, it is particularly worthwhile to optimise the ancillary times.

Dismantling and assembly

One major advantage of mobile processing can be that certain components do not have to be removed completely.

That only works, however, if the surface to be processed is accessible and the workstation can be set up safely.

With other components, dismantling remains necessary.

Three variants should therefore be examined for the calculation:

Complete removal

Component is taken out of the system.

Partial dismantling

Only covers or adjacent components are removed.

Processing in the installed position

Component remains fully assembled.

The technical fields of use for the various systems are summarised on the Beamlux page on professional applications.

Which variant is possible is decided by the specific geometry.

Transport and external appointments

External processing creates an additional dependency:

The service provider has to have capacity at the desired time.

That can work without difficulty if maintenance is planned well in advance.

With unplanned breakdowns, the scheduling question can become more critical.

Transport also takes time.

Large or heavy components can require specialist logistics.

For the economic comparison, therefore, not only transport costs but transport time should be taken into account.

An inexpensive service provider further away can be more expensive in downtime terms than a nearer alternative.

Set-up time on site

Mobile processing does not automatically mean: put the machine down and start straight away.

With powerful class 4 systems in particular, a safe working area has to be set up.

Possible tasks are:

Cordoning off the area
Erecting shielding
Positioning extraction
Providing a power supply
protecting adjacent areas
Informing staff

This set-up time belongs fully in the downtime calculation.

A mobile method is only faster if the dismantling and transport time saved is greater than the additional effort on site.

Restart and approval

After the surface work, production is not automatically released again.

Depending on the system, further steps may follow:

Assembly
Lubrication
Coating
Inspection
Calibration
Trial run
Quality approval

The restart should therefore be planned before the maintenance work begins.

One process may require an additional drying time, for example.

Another delivers a dry surface condition and can move on to the next working step more quickly.

Fraunhofer therefore regards industrial cleaning as part of the entire production chain and not as an isolated auxiliary process.

Planned and unplanned maintenance

With planned maintenance, a company can optimise the downtime window.

Several jobs can be organised in parallel.

Spare parts are ready.

External service providers are scheduled.

With an unplanned breakdown, the situation is different.

Factors such as:

immediate availability
Mobility
simple set-up
existing process knowledge

then become more important.

The cost-effectively correct strategy can therefore differ for planned and unplanned work.

Mobile processing as a possible lever

Laser-based surface processing can be carried out with mobile hand-held systems.

Fraunhofer describes mobile systems for restoration and industrial applications, among other things.

This becomes cost-effectively interesting if, as a result:

Transport is eliminated
Dismantling is reduced
only the area actually affected is treated
a subsequent process can begin immediately

The underlying technology is covered in the magazine article How does laser ablation work when cleaning metal?.

For maintenance, what matters above all is whether the process is practicable at the actual place of use.

When external processing still makes sense

Mobile in-house processing is not automatically the best solution.

External specialist firms can have advantages:

optimised systems
experienced staff
high processing capacity
existing safety infrastructure
specific post-treatment

If a component can be removed easily and a planned maintenance operation is going to take several days anyway, the additional transport may hardly matter.

The economic decision must therefore always take the overall plant schedule into account.

Preparing the downtime window

A considerable cost reduction can often be achieved through better planning alone.

Before shutdown, the following can be prepared, for example:

Tool
Spare parts
Parameters
Extraction
Safeguarding the workplace
Staff
Approvals

Particularly for recurring maintenance work, a standard procedure can be developed.

This reduces the set-up time on every subsequent deployment.

The economic benefit of a technology therefore also increases with the experience of the company.

Spare parts strategy and parallel working

Not every processing operation necessarily has to be carried out on the component currently installed.

For certain components, an exchange system can make sense.

Component A is removed and replaced by prepared component B.

A is then processed outside the critical downtime window.

This makes the surface technology itself cost-effectively less time-critical.

A good maintenance strategy therefore does not only compare processes.

It also compares process organisation.

What a comparative calculation looks like

A complete schedule is drawn up for each of two possible processes.

Process A

Shutdown
Dismantling
Transport
Processing
Return transport
Assembly
Test

Process B

Shutdown
Setting up the workstation
On-site processing
Inspection
Restart

The total time is then multiplied by the internal downtime cost rate.

Only after that are the actual processing costs added.

This order prevents an apparently cheap process from being chosen even though its ancillary times are considerably more expensive.

Safety in the production environment

A mobile class 4 laser places particular demands on its surroundings.

The DGUV guidance document FBHM-139 covers laser radiation, hazardous substances and extraction for hand-held applications, among other things.

In a production hall, adjacent workstations and traffic routes can also be relevant.

It must be possible to set up a safe laser area reliably.

The downtime saved must never be bought at the price of improvised occupational safety.