A new global report from ABB finds that industrial downtime can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds per hour, and can happen every week. A key cause is obsolete components like old motors and drives, but while 55% of respondents have strategic and proactive plan to modernise their facilities, a full third have not undertaken any motor or drive modernisation projects in the last two years. This suggests that many of these sudden stoppages could be avoided, and therein must lie an opportunity for machine builders and systems integrators. As Oswald Deuchar, global head of modernisation program at ABB Motion Services, comments: "Today, uptime is a mandate for a more competitive future.”