Downtime Costs More Than You Think

In food manufacturing, time really is money. Studies show downtime can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000 an hour depending on the production line and facility size (Oxmaint, 2025). ABB’s 2023 research put the average across industries at $125,000 per hour (ABB).

But those are just the obvious costs. The stuff you can measure in actual dollars. In food, downtime is about more than lost output. It’s wasted raw material, trucks waiting at the dock, QA scrambling to keep up, and frustrated customers wondering why shipments are late.

Eric Kong, CIO at Consilien, explains it plainly

“The numbers you see online don’t tell the whole story. Downtime isn’t just production loss. It's a compliance risk. If your MES is down when an FDA inspector asks for a record, you don’t just lose an hour, you risk fines, recalls, and even contracts. That’s why we look at downtime as a business problem, not just an IT glitch.”

The Direct Costs Everyone Sees

These hit immediately:

• Lost production – Idle lines mean lost revenue every single minute.
• Spoiled inventory – Perishable goods don’t wait for a system reboot.
• Labor costs – Paying workers who can’t do their jobs, plus overtime later to catch up.
• Supply chain delays – When shipments don’t leave on time, everything downstream slows too.

The Indirect Costs That Sting Longer

The harder costs to measure are often the ones that hurt most:

• Reputation damage – Miss a delivery twice and customers start looking for alternatives.
• Lost trust – Fail one audit because of missing records, and you’ll feel that shadow for years.
• Compliance fines – FDA, FSMA, SQF, GFSI… regulators don’t care if your ERP was down.
• Employee morale – People burn out fast when every shift feels like firefighting.

It’s Not Just Machines That Fail

Most conversations about downtime focus on broken machines and bad bearings. Important, yes. But in 2025, the bigger risk is often IT.

• ERP crashes stall scheduling and order processing.
• MES outages blind production visibility.
• Wi-Fi dead zones shut down scanners and IoT devices on the floor.
• Ransomware locks entire plants out of critical systems.
• Unsecured IoT sensors put refrigeration and monitoring at risk.

The point is simple here. IT downtime is production downtime.

Compliance Doesn’t Pause for Downtime

Food manufacturing runs on compliance frameworks like FDA, FSMA, SQF, and GFSI. If downtime prevents you from pulling traceability records during an audit, you’re exposed.

That doesn’t just mean you’ll face fines. It can mean product recalls, lost certifications, and damaged customer confidence. Consilien builds compliance readiness into every IT solution so your systems stay audit ready, even when something breaks.

How Managed IT Minimizes Downtime

The right IT partner helps food manufacturers move from reactive firefighting to proactive stability. Here are a few examples of how it’s done.

• 24/7 monitoring – Issues flagged before they cascade.
• Predictive maintenance – Cuts downtime by up to 50% (ResearchGate, 2025).
• Disaster recovery – Tested recovery plans with realistic RTO and RPO targets.
• Cybersecurity – Endpoint protection, MFA, phishing defense, SOC 2 alignment.
• Cloud ERP & MES support – Stable, secure, and backed by failover systems.
• Co-managed IT – Breathing room for internal teams stretched too thin.

When you stack these layers together, downtime doesn’t just shrink. So do the compliance risks and the reputational damage that come with it.

Why Consilien

Plenty of vendors talk about spare parts or OEE dashboards. Consilien takes a different approach.

• 25+ years supporting California manufacturers, with a special focus on food and beverage. Many of our clients have been with us for decades
• Cybersecurity first, compliance driven IT services. Security isn’t an afterthought, it’s built in.
• Expertise across FDA, FSMA, SQF, GFSI, and ISO standards. We know food industry compliance.
• We’re independent, people first, and invested in your long term success.