107 Million Strokes.
Zero Unplanned Downtime.
A Fortune 100 automotive stamping operation runs 35 Sutherland mechanical presses. Here is what zero unplanned downtime looks like at that scale, and what it takes to get there.
Most stamping operations accept unplanned downtime as part of the job. A press faults, a line stops, maintenance scrambles. The cost spreads across labor, scrap, missed schedules, and customer friction that rarely shows up on a single line item.
One of our customers runs more than 35 Sutherland mechanical presses producing finished product for the automotive industry. Their first presses have accumulated over 107 million strokes in under 3.5 years, running at 100 strokes per minute making two parts per stroke. Not a single unplanned downtime event. They have since ordered additional presses to bring their total fleet to 35 and growing.
The System That Keeps 35 Presses Running
Every press on this customer's floor runs I-PRESS AB PLUS controls with Sutherland's 4.0 monitoring system integrated into the master control. Every fault, every stroke count, every performance metric flows to a unified data stream. Maintenance knows what is happening on every press before a problem becomes a stoppage.
From Reactive to Predictive
Traditional press controls tell you what went wrong after it happens. I-PRESS tells you what is trending before it becomes a fault. Step-by-step fault diagnostics guide maintenance directly to the cause. Die monitoring catches tooling issues before they damage the press. Tonnage monitoring flags abnormal load conditions in real time.
The result is a maintenance team that operates ahead of problems rather than behind them. On a floor with 35 presses running multiple shifts, that difference is measured in 107 million strokes without a single unplanned stop. That is not luck. That is a system.
Three Things That Eliminate Unplanned Downtime
35 Presses and Growing
This customer did not start with 35 presses. They started with a handful, ran them hard, and watched them perform. When they needed more capacity, the decision was simple. They ordered more Sutherland presses.
That is the most honest customer reference a press manufacturer can have. Not a testimonial on a website. A purchase order for more equipment from a customer who already knows exactly what they are getting.
If your operation is measuring uptime in anything less than millions of strokes, or if you are managing multiple press brands with multiple control systems and multiple points of failure, read the original case study and then talk to our team.
