Three reference tables for SMB manufacturers: cost by incident type, cost by downtime duration, and cost by company size — plus the cited industry research behind the headline figures used across this suite.
To stay honest about what we actually know: this page mixes two different kinds of figures, and we label them differently on purpose.
Cited figures are drawn from named, published industry research — Siemens/Senseye, Vorne/OEE.com, and ITIC. Illustrative figures are our own worked examples, generated by running typical SMB manufacturing inputs through the Incident Cost Calculator — not the result of a survey, and not attributed to any third party. Use the cited figures for context in a board conversation; use the calculator for your own actual number.
These are cross-industry or global-enterprise figures, not SMB-manufacturing-specific — treat them as directional context on the size of the problem, not as a substitute for your own number.
A representative 50–250 employee, single-plant manufacturer (~$20M/yr revenue, two shifts, ~$2,200/hr revenue) run through the Calculator at a typical duration for each type.
| Incident Type | Typical Duration | Illustrative Cost | Severity | Primary Driver |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unplanned equipment failure | 2–4 hrs | $9,000 – $19,000 | HIGH | Lost production + repair |
| Software / controls / OT failure | 1–3 hrs | $5,000 – $14,000 | HIGH | Lost production + IT/OT support |
| Power / utility outage | 1–6 hrs (+ restart) | $6,000 – $40,000 | VARIES | Lost production, whole-plant |
| Quality defect / recall event | N/A — per batch | $8,000 – $60,000+ | MED | Scrap/rework + customer penalty |
| Supply chain disruption | 4 hrs – 3 days | $7,000 – $75,000 | MED | Idle labor + starved-line loss |
| Safety / compliance incident | 1–8 hrs stop-work | $5,000 – $30,000+ | HIGH | Idle labor + regulatory/legal exposure |
Full cost-driver breakdowns and mitigations for each type live on the By Incident Type page.
Same representative plant (~$2,200/hr revenue, 8 affected staff at $38/hr fully-loaded, full stoppage, no restart padding) at increasing durations — production and labor cost only, before any repair or secondary costs.
| Duration | Lost Production | Idle Labor | Illustrative Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 minutes | $550 | $76 | $626 |
| 1 hour | $2,200 | $304 | $2,504 |
| 4 hours | $8,800 | $1,216 | $10,016 |
| 8 hours (full shift) | $17,600 | $2,432 | $20,032 |
| 24 hours | $52,800 | $7,296 | $60,096 |
Note this excludes restart/ramp-up time, repair cost, and scrap/penalties — run the full picture, including your own numbers, on the Calculator.
Fixed costs — idle labor, repair callouts, minimum crew sizes — disproportionately hurt smaller plants. A 4-hour full-stoppage equipment failure, scaled by typical revenue-per-hour, headcount, and repair cost at each size:
| Company Size | Illustrative Revenue/Hr | Illustrative Headcount Affected | 4-Hr Incident Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small (<$10M/yr) | ~$1,000/hr | 3–5 | $5,300 – $5,600 |
| Mid SMB ($10–50M/yr) | ~$2,200/hr | 6–10 | $11,200 – $11,800 |
| Larger SMB ($50–100M/yr) | ~$5,000/hr | 12–20 | $24,800 – $26,000 |
Smaller operations often can't absorb a bad month of incidents the way a larger plant can — which is exactly why the annualized exposure figure on the Calculator matters more than any single incident's cost.
The hub page — headline benchmarks, cost components, and links into the full suite.
Open Overview →Model a real incident against your own revenue, labor, and recovery costs.
Open the Calculator →Deep dive on each incident category — cost drivers, typical duration, and mitigations.
Browse Types →MTTR, MTBF, OEE, RTO/RPO, and the rest of the operational-reliability vocabulary, plant-floor edition.
Read the Glossary →No — they're worked examples, clearly labeled "Illustrative," generated by running one representative SMB manufacturer's inputs through our own calculator at typical durations. They're meant to show the shape of the cost, not stand in as third-party research. Only the three headline stats (11%, 60%/85% OEE, 98%/$100K) are cited from named external sources.
We'd rather cite fewer numbers we're confident are accurate than many precise-looking ones we can't verify. We only cite statistics from well-known, widely-referenced research (Siemens/Senseye, Vorne, ITIC); everything else is run through our own transparent, disclosed formula using your inputs.
We review the cited figures and refresh the illustrative tables periodically as the calculator's methodology evolves. If you spot a figure that looks stale or a source that's been updated, let us know via the contact page.
Repair callouts, minimum crew sizes, and a single critical machine's downtime are largely fixed costs — a small plant feels a $5,000 incident far more than a large one feels a $30,000 incident, relative to its revenue base. That's part of why we built this calculator around SMB manufacturing specifically rather than reusing enterprise-scale benchmarks.