Fluke Reliability tackles industry’s silent crises

During the week of March 9, 2026, hundreds of maintenance and reliability professionals gathered in Austin, Texas, to discuss how U.S. manufacturers can put their most reliable foot forward despite global risks and disruptions to the industrial landscape. This latest annual Xcelerate conference, hosted by Fluke Corp.’s reliability organization, coincided with the release of an industry survey that painted a rather grim picture of the current state of best practices.

The research, conducted by Censuswide, surveyed more than 600 senior decision-makers and maintenance professionals in the U.S., the UK and Germany. The results indicated that more than half (55%) of U.S. manufacturers have been hit by unplanned downtime in the past year, with as much as $207M of capital impact per week. Downtime is not only frequent and prolonged, but also reflects vulnerabilities that threaten profitability, competitiveness and board-level resilience, the survey indicated.

Further, among those U.S. survey respondents experiencing unscheduled downtime, nearly half reported 6-10 incidents each week; almost one in five (19%) face a staggering 11-20 incidents weekly. At an average cost of $400k per hour, a single incident can add up to $13.8 million in losses.

All this despite investments intended to alleviate such outages, according to Jay Hack (left in image), vice president and general manager of Fluke’s eMaint software business. “Technology is only as good as the person on the front line,” he explained. “When leadership steers, reliability follows.”

“Companies are investing, but failing to connect these investments,” added Vineet Thuvara, Fluke’s chief product officer. These siloed technologies include 12% that said they are using digital twins, 12% using predictive maintenance and 13% using condition monitoring.

“But knowing where you are isn’t enough,” added Thuvara. “The question is how can we reduce the noise, the distractions on the way forward?”

Treat workers like critical assets

He distilled the three guideposts for effective downtime prevention as 1) having people who understand what they need to be doing; 2) hardware and sensors on the edge, collecting necessary data; and 3) solutions that interpret that data, providing the meaningful insights necessary for rapid decision-making. “What’s needed is a GPS, a global positioning system for reliability,” Thuvara said.

“We must treat talent like a critical asset,” added Parker Burke (right in image), president, Fluke Corp. “Put new hires with your best people, then let the new hires do the work,” he explained. “This may include leveraging AI and other tools to track their work, track their development—just like you would one of your essential assets.”

“The technician of the future must know the tools, and will do more than they ever did before,” Burke added. “With this knowledge in mind, who will you talk to on Thursday [when you return home]? A partner in HR, an operations leader? Or nearby educational institutions?

“Take the initiative to get to know the faculty who is training tomorrow’s technicians,” Burke said. “It’ll make you and your company more successful.”

Leverage AI to boost worker productivity

On the software innovation front, Jay Hack previewed new AI-based capabilities for Fluke’s eMaint maintenance management software suite that are now in beta mode. “Users can now ask, build, speak and learn—it’s ChatGPT for maintenance tasks,” he said.

For example, he explained, eMaint users can now:

• ASK: “How many batteries are there in our global fleet of forklifts, and when was each last changed?” (This inquiry is via a typed prompt into the system, not a verbal command.)
• BUILD: “Generate standard operating procedures (SOPs), i.e., for forklift battery replacement, from a PDF upload of the forklift’s maintenance manual.” (These are 90% there, but save a ton of time.)
• SPEAK: “Generate an eMaint work order via spoken word, automatically populated into a work order.”
• LEARN: “Upload a maintenance manual, then generate a translation to another language.”

Customers can currently use these AI capabilities in the eMaint X5 beta environment, with commercial release scheduled for Q2 2026.