How many hours vanish each year into repetitive tasks?
Six work moments where time slips away without anyone counting it. Cost them with your own data, set your own recoverable-time assumption, and see what it adds up to over a year. It's your assumption, not a promise.
Every value is an estimate, and all of them can be changed. The calculation runs in your browser: no data is sent.
The work moments
| Task | Times / yr | Min / person | People |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tracking down a piece of equipment's historyBefore a trade-off, a shutdown, a query from an inspection body | |||
| Re-keying report dataCopying values from a PDF into a spreadsheet or the CMMS | |||
| Writing up an intervention reportFormatting, proofreading, circulation | |||
| Searching for a procedure or a drawingTechnical documentation, manuals, diagrams | |||
| Preparing an auditGathering inspection and compliance records | |||
| Preparing a shutdownBuilding the scope from the history |
"Min / person" is the time for a single person, each time. The "People" column already multiplies that time, so do not put the whole team's total into the minutes.
Why you set the percentage yourself
Most return-on-investment simulators announce a gain. They cannot: the share of time actually absorbed depends on the state of your documents, the variety of your formats, the level of verification you demand and the way your teams work. A figure asserted with authority says nothing about your situation.
The assumption is therefore in your hands. What the tool provides is the first half of the calculation, the time actually spent today, which no one measures and which is almost always underestimated.
What this calculation does not count
It counts only the visible time. It ignores decisions taken without the history because reconstructing it would have taken too long, measurement campaigns redone for want of finding the earlier ones, and unplanned shutdowns whose warning sign lay dormant in a report. Those costs are real and far heavier: they are simply impossible to cost honestly in a form.
It also ignores the cost of entry: importing the history, setting up, training the teams. See training a maintenance team in AI on what adoption really involves.
Definition
The lost-hours calculator quantifies the time absorbed each year by repetitive documentary tasks in maintenance: tracking down the history of an equipment, re-keying report values into the CMMS, writing up an intervention report. It adds up those hours, converts them at the loaded hourly rate and applies the share you consider recoverable. What it does not do: promise a saving. The recoverable share is your own assumption, not a vendor figure, and the result deliberately ignores both the upfront cost (migrating the history, setting up, training the teams) and the checking time that remains.
Formula
Hours lost per year = sum, over each selected task, of (annual frequency x unit duration). Potential saving = hours lost x recoverable share, that share being an assumption you make and must be able to defend. Cost = hours x loaded hourly rate. Durations are expressed in hours, the hourly rate in euros per hour.
How to use this tool
- List the documentary tasks that are genuinely repetitive: three or four are enough, the ones the teams redo every week without thinking about it.
- Estimate the annual frequency and the unit duration from reality, having them confirmed by the people who perform the task rather than keeping a default value.
- Set a conservative recoverable share and know why that one: human checking remains necessary, no tool brings these times down to zero.
- Read the result as an order of magnitude meant to open a discussion, not as a budget forecast.
- Set the potential saving against the upfront cost: migrating the history, setting up, training. A saving that does not cover that cost is not yet a project.
Worked example
Three tasks are selected. Tracking down the history of an equipment: 150 times a year, half an hour each time, that is 75 hours. Re-keying report values into the CMMS: 200 times a year, a quarter of an hour, that is 50 hours. Writing up an intervention report: 250 times a year, half an hour, that is 125 hours. Total: 250 hours a year, about five hours a week over fifty weeks. With a recoverable share estimated at 30 percent, the potential saving is 75 hours. At a loaded hourly rate of 45 euros, the 250 hours represent 11,250 euros and the potential saving 3,375 euros. It is that last figure, not the first, that must be set against the upfront cost before concluding.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the default values shown come from?
They are orders of magnitude meant to be replaced, not references. The only figure that counts is the one you measure at your own site; as long as the default values remain in place, the result is worthless.
Why does the tool not offer a percentage saving?
Because it depends on the state of your documents, the variety of your formats and the level of checking you require. A simulator that quotes a percentage is really quoting a sales pitch.
Is this result enough to build a budget?
No. It gives an order of magnitude to open the discussion, and it deliberately ignores the upfront cost: migrating the existing history, setting up, training the teams.