July 18, 2025
Most people assume downtime is caused
by technical issues. But in many plants, it's the data that's the real issue, not
the machines. Systems are fine, but the people using them are flying blind. And
when you're responsible for finances, compliance, or client satisfaction, you
can't afford guesswork.
In a recent Industry Week survey, 62% of
manufacturers said poor data visibility was a major contributor to avoidable
downtime and audit errors. That's not a hardware issue. That's a visibility
issue—one that grows as systems multiply and fail to communicate with each
other.
This is especially true in regulated
environments. One medical device firm had five systems that didn't sync.
Finance, quality, and production all ran separate reports. When they transitioned
to a real-time compliance dashboard, connecting finance, ERP, and audit
records, they reduced audit preparation time from two weeks to two days. And
avoided a shutdown order when a new inspector walked in.
"You
can't protect what you can't see—and you can't fix what you don't measure." — Theresa Payton,
former White House CIO
In contrast, a similar-sized plant still
relied on emailed spreadsheets to reconcile order data. A mislabeling issue
went unnoticed for three days, resulting in $400K worth of rejected
inventory—and a client loss that took nine months to repair.
"When
your systems can't talk, your people waste time translating—and that creates
risk." — Michael
Dell
Questions every CFO or controller
should ask this quarter:
- Are my compliance records stored in one place—or six?
- Can I track quality flags, cost overruns, and system outages from one dashboard?
- Are teams duplicating efforts to fix the same issues?
- If I had to prep an audit response in 24 hours—could I?
5 data visibility red flags to check
for:
- Reporting delays greater than 24 hours for key KPIs
- Quality reports siloed from financial systems
- Spreadsheets as a substitute for system integration
- Inconsistent data between ERP and MES reports
- Manual cross-checking for every audit cycle
You don't need to replace everything. But
you do need to see clearly. Because if your team is busy fixing symptoms
instead of solving problems, that's not uptime—it's treading water.
