How to Use the Winter Shutdown to Strengthen Your Production Line for 2026
As plants head into December, reduced staffing, holiday closures, and colder conditions can create the perfect storm for equipment failures and delayed lead times. OEMs slow down, parts become harder to get hold of, and January often sees a spike in breakdowns during restart.
For many manufacturers, the winter shutdown is the ideal moment to get ahead of issues and prepare their production lines for a stronger start to the new year.
This blog outlines practical steps maintenance teams can take now and how strategic use of repairs, refurbishment, and legacy spares can protect productivity and budgets.
1. Take Advantage of Slower Production: Repair Before Restart
Demand on production lines often eases in December. This creates a valuable window to send ageing drives, PLCs, HMIs, power supplies, motors, and servo equipment for repair or refurbishment.
Why this matters:
- Many failures occur on restart after a shutdown.
- Capacitors, fans, I/O modules and ageing PCBs are more likely to fail after sitting idle.
- Repair queues get longer in January. Maintenance teams who act now avoid delays.
What to repair first:
- PLC CPUs and I/O
- Servo drives and inverters
- HMIs and industrial screens
- Power supplies
- Legacy modules with rising OEM lead times
2. Stock Up Before OEM Lead Times Spike
OEMs regularly close for a week or more in late December. Combined with reduced logistics capacity, lead times often stretch into late January or even February.
Where we support you:
- Immediate availability of legacy and obsolete modules
- Rapid EU and UK delivery
- Multiple condition options (new, used, refurbished, tested)
- 24/7 dispatch for emergency breakdowns
This ensures production teams aren’t left waiting when a fault appears during start-up or test runs.
3. Review Your Critical Spares List
Winter is an ideal time to rethink what you hold on your shelves. When budgets are tight, the right spares prevent painful downtime later.
A solid critical spares list covers:
- Any single point of failure
- Obsolete items no longer supported by the OEM
- Drives and PLCs with known failure patterns
- HMIs/screens at risk of dimming or dead-pixels
- Modules with high failure frequency during temperature drops
If you’re unsure what’s missing or what is genuinely high-risk, we offer a ‘free mini audit checklist’ to help you score and prioritise equipment.
4. Plan for 2026 Modernisation, Without Ripping Out Legacy Equipment
With the rise of software-defined automation, virtual controllers, and smart manufacturing, many plants are planning upgrades for 2026–2028.
But modernising doesn’t always mean replacing everything now.
In fact, most manufacturers will continue running legacy equipment for years. Keeping that equipment reliable with fast repairs and easy access to spares gives teams the breathing space to modernise on their own timeline.
Conclusion
Winter shutdown doesn’t need to be downtime; it can be the most important period for improving resilience, protecting budgets, and setting your production line up for a stronger year ahead.
If you’d like personalised guidance, you can request our ‘Free Legacy Equipment Mini Audit Checklist’. It helps you identify hidden risks, score your equipment by priority, and build a spares plan that saves unexpected costs in January.
