An Unfortunate Tale About How One Overlooked Backup System Brought Production to a Halt.
In industrial settings, downtime is measured in minutes—and those minutes cost money. For one mid-sized manufacturing plant, a single UPS failure during a routine power outage shut down operations for nearly a full day. The result was $83,000 in lost productivity, missed deadlines, and damaged materials.
This post-mortem examines what went wrong, how it could have been prevented, and what lessons apply to any operation that relies on 24/7 uptime.
The Incident
In March 2024, a precision metal manufacturing plant experienced a significant power outage during a scheduled regional utility maintenance event. What should have been a brief interruption turned into an 8.5-hour operational shutdown. The incident resulted in an estimated $83,000 in total losses, affecting production, materials, labor, and customer commitments.
What Failed?
The plant relied on a single centralized UPS system (without redundancy) to support its production control servers, CNC interface computers, and safety systems during short-term outages.
When the power went out, the UPS failed to engage. Systems crashed mid-cycle, machine controls lost communication, and the entire production floor was brought to a standstill.
Root Causes of the Failure:
- The UPS batteries were 6 years old—well past manufacturer recommendations
- A bad capacitor triggered a system fault on switchover
- There was no monitoring system in place to detect degraded performance
- No generator was installed to cover extended outages
- The UPS system had no redundancies
The Financial Impact of the Outage
The financial impact of the outage was significant. The plant lost approximately $48,000 in production output due to 8.5 hours of unplanned downtime. An additional $17,000 was incurred from material damage caused by interrupted machining cycles. Labor costs spiked by $9,000 as schedules were shuffled and overtime was required to catch up. On top of that, the plant faced more than $9,000 in client penalties for missed delivery deadlines, further straining customer relationships.
Operationally, the disruption was just as severe. Several CNC jobs in progress were corrupted mid-cycle, requiring reprogramming and material replacement. Remote monitoring and quality assurance tools lost connection during the outage, leaving key processes blind. Automated safety systems went offline, triggering a full-floor shutdown for safety compliance. Communication with the plant’s central ERP system was also lost, halting production coordination. And with no service plan in place, emergency recovery efforts were delayed by several hours.
Lessons Learned
After a full review, plant management identified several key failures—technical and procedural—that led to the outage. And ways they could prevent an incident like this from happening again.
- Installed dual-redundant UPS units (N+1) for critical automation and control systems
- Scheduled routine UPS inspections and battery replacement
- Added a backup generator to power the plant’s core systems
- Implemented a real-time UPS monitoring system, with alerts and alarms
- Trained staff on proper shutdown procedures and outage response
Final Thought
In manufacturing, every minute counts. A $3,000 UPS maintenance plan could’ve prevented an $83,000 shutdown. If you haven’t tested or maintained your power backup systems lately… consider this your wake-up call.
Want to make sure your plant’s power strategy is production-proof? Let’s talk about how to keep your systems online—when it matters most.
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