How to Reduce Rising Maintenance Costs in Your Industrial Manufacturing Facility

Unplanned downtime is draining billions from industrial manufacturers every year. According to a landmark report by Senseye, large plants lose an average of 323 production hours annually to equipment failures. With each lost hour costing approximately $532,000 in revenue, penalties, idle labor, and restart costs, that adds up to a staggering $172 million per plant per year.

Zoom out, and global impact becomes even more alarming. Fortune Global 500 manufacturers are now losing $1.5 trillion annually—an eye-watering 11% of their total turnover—to machine failure and operational disruptions. That’s nearly one and a half times what it was just two years ago.

For leadership teams under pressure to protect margins, every hour lost to downtime is an hour of EBITDA left on the table.

Why such increasingly alarming figures? Today’s manufacturers are navigating a perfect storm of aging infrastructure, a shrinking skilled workforce, and growing supply chain volatility. In this environment, reactive, run-to-failure strategies aren’t just outdated, they’re unaffordable.

But there’s good news. Predictive maintenance (PdM) paired with strategic maintenance budgeting is helping teams cut costs, eliminate downtime, and improve reliability without increasing headcount or complexity.

Why Maintenance Budgets Are Spiraling Out of Control

Maintenance budgets across critical industries continue to swell year after year. Let’s explore today’s operational realities that underscore the need for smart maintenance budgeting.

Reactive Maintenance Culture

In far too many facilities, the default strategy is still “run-to-failure.” Maintenance teams wait until something breaks and then scramble to fix it. While this approach may seem efficient since resources are concentrated where needed, it leads to unpredictable spending and a reliance on expensive emergency repairs. 

It also blinds leadership to patterns and trends that could otherwise guide smarter investment.

Labor & Skills Shortage

As the industrial workforce ages and experienced technicians retire, many facilities are stretched thin with overtime, contract labor, or costly third-party vendors trying to fill the gaps. Reactive strategies become even more risky and expensive to execute the fewer boots there are on the ground.

Equipment Obsolescence

Legacy equipment was not designed for a connected, data-driven environment. These machines require more manual inspections and repairs, lack built-in diagnostics, and consume more parts and labor over time. That translates to more downtime, more manual inspections, and higher spare parts usage, all of which balloon the maintenance budget.

Rising Complexity and Risk

Factors extending beyond the plant floor are also accelerating the cost and frequency of downtime. According to IDS-INDATA, unplanned downtime has become more interconnected and expensive. Global supply chains, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and energy market shifts mean a single failure can now impact multiple lines, sites, or customers.

3 Proven Strategies to Reduce Maintenance Costs

Reducing costs doesn’t mean cutting headcount or delaying repairs. It means getting smarter about when, where, and how you act.

1. Monitor Equipment 24/7 with Smart Sensors

Traditional maintenance strategies miss what happens between scheduled inspections. Waites’ wireless, AI-powered sensors continuously monitor full-spectrum vibration, temperature, and other critical metrics, eliminating the need for manual inspections and detecting failures before they escalate.

Real-time alerts give maintenance teams the power to respond to early warning signs, preventing small anomalies from snowballing into multi-million-dollar shutdowns. Our system detects 99.92% of downtime-causing issues before they result in failure, giving your team the time to plan repairs instead of reacting under pressure.

“Instead of reacting to a crisis, we integrate repairs into our existing maintenance schedule—often preventing a complete shutdown. Before using Waites, we relied on periodic inspections and manual lubrication. Unplanned downtime caught us off guard far too often, especially with equipment where the original manufacturer’s lead times can be months.” —Jelle Willems, RELIABILITY ENGINEER AT OWENS CORNING

2. Do More With Leaner Teams

As skilled labor becomes harder to source, the ability to automate diagnostics and prioritize repairs is a force multiplier. With PdM, leaner teams can operate with precision and confidence without compromising on uptime, safety, or performance.

Waites helps maintenance teams focus their time and energy where it matters most by delivering clear, prescriptive insights. Instead of chasing false alarms or performing routine inspections on healthy equipment, technicians can respond to real issues before they escalate. Doing so boosts first-time fix rates and helps teams maximize wrench time, avoid costly rework, and contribute directly to reducing maintenance costs.

Best of all, Waites turns technicians into strategic problem solvers. With real-time data and predictive insights at their fingertips, they can prevent issues before they happen. That shift empowers leaner teams to drive meaningful impact and build more resilient operations.

3. Standardize Practices Across Facilities

Disjointed systems create data silos, inconsistent protocols, and a lack of visibility across sites, which makes it difficult to pinpoint where budget is being wasted or where equipment is most at risk. Waites solves this by providing a single, centralized solution that unifies monitoring, reporting, and diagnostics across all locations. Whether you manage five facilities or fifty, you get real-time, apples-to-apples insights into your assets’ performance to make more informed enterprise-level decisions.

This not only reduces duplicated effort, but also makes it easier for managers to spot where crew performance, asset health, or execution gaps are dragging down uptime.

Even better, you don’t need to navigate a maze of IT hurdles to scale our PdM system. Waites’ IT-independent architecture allows for fast, secure deployment without touching your internal network.

Built for ROI and Backed by Experts

For industrial teams seeking a fast reduction in maintenance costs, Waites delivers an average return on investment in as little as 3 to 6 months. Our high-density sensor deployments deliver comprehensive, real-time visibility across the entire plant floor, detecting issues before they escalate into costly failures. Such deep coverage eliminates guesswork, helping teams prioritize maintenance efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact—a core principle of smart maintenance budgeting.

Whether it’s a pilot line or an enterprise rollout, Waites delivers scalable impact from day one.

What sets Waites apart is our frictionless implementation and ongoing expert support. Our PdM system runs on a dedicated mesh network with cellular gateways, operating entirely outside of your IT infrastructure so deployment is quick and secure. And beyond the technology, you gain access to 24/7 certified vibration analysts who partner with your team to interpret insights, troubleshoot issues, and ensure your maintenance strategy stays aligned with business goals.

The Cost of Doing Nothing Is High…Get Started Now

Downtime doesn’t just hurt margins—it hurts trust, team morale, and operational predictability. But with a comprehensive PdM system, you stay ahead of problems. You make decisions with confidence. You turn maintenance from a cost center into a strategic advantage.

Now’s the time to take control and reduce maintenance costs.

Let’s talk about what Waites can do for your bottom line.