Production line downtime dashboard in Power BI: net downtime, MTTR and MTBF on one page

The problem: a downtime number nobody trusted

Most plants report downtime from maintenance notifications. When one breakdown gets several notifications at once, for example a repair order for mechanics and a corrective order for electrics, simply adding their durations makes downtime look larger than it was.

The production manager and the maintenance manager then each have their own number, meetings are spent arguing about which is right, and decisions about budget, spare parts and technicians are delayed.

What the downtime dashboard shows

Everything sits on one page, and every selection filters the other panels at the same time:

• Downtime timeline: each row is one production day from 07:00 to 07:00 the next day; the first half is the day shift and the second half the night shift. Each bar is a stoppage notification, coloured by type: preventive, repair, corrective or work request.
• Overlaps show up in red on the timeline and are counted only once in net downtime.
• A Jalali month calendar shaded by downtime; heavy days stand out at a glance, and one click filters the whole dashboard to that day.
• Equipment groups with their notification counts; a double-click opens the equipment tree, from the whole plant down to one machine.
• KPI cards: number of failures, total downtime, overlap, net downtime, MTTR and MTBF.
• Detail window: double-click a bar to see the notification number, equipment, work centre, start and end, duration and failure description.

How the metrics are calculated

Exact definitions matter more than the chart; they are fixed in the dashboard so everyone talks about the same number:

• Net downtime: the union of the notification time ranges in each shift, not their plain sum; when two notifications run at the same time, the shared range counts once.
• Overlap: plain sum of notifications minus net downtime; it shows how much double counting was removed.
• MTTR (mean time to repair): breakdown downtime divided by the number of breakdowns; how long it takes on average to get the line running again.
• MTBF (mean time between failures): operating time divided by the number of breakdowns; the higher, the more reliable the equipment.

How to use the dashboard

A suggested routine for the production or maintenance manager takes a few minutes a week:

• Check the calendar and click the heavy days.
• Compare equipment groups by net downtime and single out the top three.
• Double-click a group to reach the equipment with the largest share.
• Double-click the red bars to see where several failures happened at once, and why.
• Compare each group’s MTTR and MTBF with the target and give every gap an action and an owner.

Decisions made with this dashboard

A downtime dashboard is for decisions, not for reporting. A few common ones made on this page:

• Prioritising maintenance budget and spare parts for the groups with the most net downtime.
• Keeping critical parts by the line and writing repair procedures for groups with a high MTTR.
• Stepping up preventive maintenance, or assessing replacement, for equipment with a low MTBF.
• Staffing mechanical and electrical technicians on the night shift when nights see more downtime.
• Reporting and target setting on net downtime only, so the management meeting and the maintenance team use the same number.

Technical build in Power BI

Data comes from the maintenance system’s notifications and the shift calendar. During data preparation each notification is assigned to its production day and shift, and overlaps are calculated before the data reaches the report, so every view uses the same number.

The result is a Power BI report published to Power BI Service and refreshed with every data update; the two-shift timeline and the Jalali calendar are designed so that the production day and its night shift sit side by side.

Frequently asked questions