Why manufacturing IT services need different uptime guarantees than office-based businesses get
Your production line stops because the MES system went down. Fifteen employees are standing idle. Raw materials are staged but can't be processed. Customer orders that were supposed to ship today won't make it. And your IT provider's standard service level agreement promises a four-hour response time for priority issues.
Four hours of downtime in an office means some frustrated employees and delayed work. Four hours of downtime in manufacturing means tens of thousands in lost production, missed delivery commitments, and possibly spoiled materials that can't be paused mid-process.
This fundamental difference is why manufacturing IT services can't just be office IT applied to a factory floor. The uptime guarantees that work fine for service companies are inadequate for operations where every minute of downtime has a direct, measurable cost.
When downtime actually means stopped production
In an office environment, most IT outages are annoying but not catastrophic. Email goes down, people work on other tasks. The accounting system is unavailable, they catch up later. Document management is offline, they use local files temporarily.
Manufacturing doesn't have these workarounds. When the systems controlling production go down:
Automated equipment can't receive instructions and sits idle
Quality control processes can't record measurements or flag defects
Inventory management stops tracking materials and finished goods
Scheduling systems can't coordinate which orders run when
Employees can't clock in/out or access work instructions
There's no "I'll work on something else meanwhile." Production stops, and every minute it's stopped costs real money in lost output, wasted labor, and potentially damaged customer relationships.
Manufacturing IT services need to account for this reality with uptime guarantees that reflect production requirements, not office convenience.
The shift schedule complication
Most office-based IT service agreements assume business hours are roughly 8 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday. Support outside those hours costs extra or requires special escalation.
Manufacturing runs on different schedules:
Two-shift operations running 6 AM to 10 PM
Three-shift operations running 24/6 or 24/7
Weekend shifts to meet production demands
Holiday production when orders require it
Your second shift starts at 2 PM. If an IT issue emerges at 3 PM and takes four hours to resolve, that's half the shift lost. But standard IT agreements don't prioritize afternoon issues the same way they do morning ones because they're thinking about office hours.
Quality manufacturing IT services understand that uptime guarantees need to cover your actual production schedule, not hypothetical business hours.
The maintenance window that doesn't exist
Office IT providers love to schedule maintenance during evenings or weekends when users aren't working. It's the obvious time to update systems, apply patches, and perform routine maintenance.
Manufacturing operations often don't have these convenient windows. Your factory runs Sunday through Friday because Saturday is the only day you're down. Or you run 24/7 and scheduling downtime requires coordinating with production planners weeks in advance to find four-hour gaps.
This creates tension around proactive maintenance. Manufacturing IT services need to approach system updates and patches differently:
Coordinating with production schedules months in advance for planned downtime
Implementing redundancy so maintenance can happen on one system while another maintains operations
Breaking large updates into smaller chunks that fit your available windows
Sometimes accepting slightly delayed patches because production can't stop for updates
IT providers accustomed to office environments struggle with this. They want to maintain systems on their schedule, not yours, because that's how they're used to operating.
The cascading effect unique to manufacturing
When IT fails in an office, it's usually isolated to that specific system. The CRM goes down, sales is affected but accounting keeps working. Email is out, but people can still access shared files.
Manufacturing systems are interconnected in ways that create cascading failures:
MES system goes down, affecting both production control AND quality documentation
Inventory management fails, halting both receiving AND shipping because you can't track materials
Network issues in one area of the plant can isolate equipment that depends on real-time data
ERP problems affect production scheduling, purchasing, inventory, and shipping simultaneously
Manufacturing IT services need uptime guarantees that account for these interdependencies. A four-hour response time for a system that brings down three departments isn't adequate when the cost is measured in stopped production across multiple lines.
The specialized equipment challenge
Manufacturing often involves equipment that's connected to IT systems but wasn't designed by IT people. CNC machines, PLCs, SCADA systems, industrial controllers—these run production but have unique requirements.
Some of this equipment:
Runs on operating systems or software versions that can't be easily updated
Requires vendor-specific knowledge to troubleshoot when IT issues arise
Can't tolerate network latency that office applications handle fine
Needs 24/7 connectivity even though it's only actively producing during shifts
Standard IT providers look at this equipment and treat it like any other networked device. Manufacturing IT services understand these systems need different support approaches, different monitoring, and different uptime commitments because they're mission-critical in ways that office workstations aren't.
The cost calculation that changes everything
Office businesses calculate IT downtime costs in terms of employee productivity. If twenty people making $35/hour can't work for two hours, you've lost roughly $1,400 in productivity. That's real money, but it's not catastrophic.
Manufacturing calculates downtime differently:
Direct labor costs for idle workers
Lost production output and the revenue it represents
Spoiled materials that can't be paused mid-process
Missed delivery commitments and associated penalties
Expedited shipping costs to make up for delays
Potential loss of future orders from unhappy customers
A two-hour outage might cost a manufacturer $10,000, $50,000, or more depending on what's being produced and what orders are affected. These numbers make IT uptime guarantees far more critical than they are for office operations.
What appropriate uptime guarantees look like
Manufacturing IT services that actually work for production environments structure their agreements differently:
Time-based guarantees aligned with production - Not "4-hour response during business hours" but "1-hour response during first and second shift, 2-hour response during third shift" or whatever matches your operation.
Severity levels that reflect production impact - Issues stopping production get priority one treatment regardless of what time they occur or which system is affected. The standard IT severity matrix doesn't apply.
Planned maintenance coordination - Formal processes for scheduling maintenance around production needs, with advance notice requirements and flexibility to reschedule if production demands change.
Redundancy requirements - Specifying which systems need backup capabilities so maintenance or failures don't require complete production stops.
Cost penalties for missed targets - Service level agreements that include actual financial accountability when uptime commitments aren't met, reflecting the real cost to your business.
The provider selection question
Most IT service providers can technically support manufacturing environments. They'll install the networks, manage the servers, and troubleshoot problems when they arise.
The differentiator is whether they understand that manufacturing IT services require fundamentally different thinking about uptime:
Do they ask about your production schedule before proposing service levels?
Can they articulate the difference between affecting office productivity and stopping production?
Do they have processes for coordinating with production planning?
Have they supported other manufacturing operations with similar schedules?
Are they willing to commit to uptime guarantees that match your needs rather than their standard office-based SLAs?
If an IT provider is selling you the same service agreement they offer to law firms and accounting practices, they're not thinking about your manufacturing requirements—they're just thinking about selling IT services.
Making the business case internally
Operations managers and production schedulers immediately understand why manufacturing needs different IT uptime guarantees. Finance teams sometimes need convincing because specialized manufacturing IT services cost more than basic office IT support.
The business case comes down to math: calculate what one hour of production downtime actually costs your operation. Multiply that by how many hours of downtime your current IT arrangement tolerates annually. Compare that cost to the premium for manufacturing-specific IT services with appropriate uptime guarantees.
In most cases, paying more for IT services that minimize production downtime is dramatically cheaper than accepting frequent outages with standard office-based service levels.
Your manufacturing operation isn't an office that happens to have some equipment in it. It's a production environment where technology downtime directly translates to stopped output and lost revenue. Manufacturing IT services need to reflect that reality with uptime guarantees built around your production requirements, not borrowed from service agreements designed for desk workers who can find something else to do when systems are down.
