Top 5 Most Common Reasons for a 'Plant Down' Situation - Part 1

A ‘Plant Down’ is a term used to describe a critical incident that occurs that grinds a production process to a halt. Every year the UK and Ireland loses millions of pounds as a result of loss of production during during these situations. So what are the top 5 most common reasons for a plant down situation occurring? 

We asked our Technical Support Manager, David Baskett to explain more: 

• IT Changes - IT Departments are not always aligned with the production department and are not always aware that a slight change to the IT infrastructure can have an impact on production. This could be as simple as a change to the network or IP address.

• Power Cuts – Power cuts or acts of nature are not always predicable for example a storm blowing down power cables, or someone accidentally cutting a line and many a time this will negatively affect production.

• Hard Drive Failure – If a piece of machinery goes down or breaks that is a key part of equipment to keep the production process up and running this can have a detrimental effect on up-time.

• Anti-Virus Software – Antivirus software has been known to scan files and block or shut them down because it detects they are a virus when they are not again causing unnecessary downtime. 

• Running out of Disk Space – if memory gets low or the disk space is used up this can cause major problems if left undetected.

     Next Week - Part 2 - How to prevent a 'Plant Down' situation!