Key takeaways
Short answer: A breakdown is a significant failure that stops the line and gets logged and worked on. A micro-stop is a brief stoppage — often under a few minutes — that operators clear without recording. Individually trivial, micro-stops add up to a huge Performance loss that breakdown-focused tracking never sees, and they need different fixes from breakdowns. See also downtime tracking manual vs automatic.
A breakdown is a failure long enough and serious enough to require maintenance. It gets a work order, a cause and a repair, and it shows up clearly in the data because everyone notices the line is down.
A micro-stop is a brief halt — a jam, a misfeed, a sensor trip, a quick manual adjustment — that the operator clears in seconds or a couple of minutes without logging anything. Each one is trivial, which is exactly why they go unrecorded and accumulate unseen.
A packaging line logs two breakdowns this week totalling 90 minutes — clearly visible, duly worked on. Automated capture then reveals 240 micro-stops averaging 40 seconds: 160 minutes of lost time the logs never showed, nearly double the breakdown loss. The maintenance team had been focused entirely on the two breakdowns while the bigger problem — a marginal infeed guide causing constant short jams — sat invisible. The micro-stops were the real story.
They are too short and frequent to log by hand, so they vanish from manual data. Automatic capture is usually the only way to see them — and when plants finally do, micro-stops often top the loss Pareto, reordering the entire improvement plan.
Breakdowns are a maintenance and reliability problem. Micro-stops are usually a process, tooling and material problem — a slightly out-of-spec part, a worn guide, a marginal sensor. Sending maintenance to "fix the micro-stops" misses the point; they need process engineering, not a repair.
1. Tracking only breakdowns. The larger micro-stop loss stays invisible.
2. Treating micro-stops as a maintenance issue. They are usually process and tooling problems.
3. No automatic capture. Manual logs cannot see short stops at all.
4. Tolerating "just a quick jam." Hundreds of quick jams outweigh the occasional breakdown.
Breakdowns show up in Availability; micro-stops in Performance. A plant chasing only Availability can have great uptime and still bleed OEE through micro-stops it never measured — which is why Performance is so often the hidden biggest loss.
Fabrico captures micro-stops automatically and separates them from breakdowns, so the real Performance loss finally appears on your Pareto. Book a demo to see your micro-stops quantified.
Typically under a few minutes — short enough that operators clear it without logging.
Often more than breakdowns in total OEE lost, because they are frequent and unmeasured.
Automatic downtime capture — manual logs miss them almost entirely.
Process and tooling owners, not just maintenance — the causes are usually process, not failure.
They are too brief and frequent to log by hand, so they never reach the report.
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