Line stop
A halt of a production line, either triggered on purpose so a problem is fixed before it spreads, or forced by a failure somewhere along the line.
The network analogy
A full outage for the factory: on a connected line, every station stops producing until the cause is cleared.
Why it matters for wireless
On a connected line, one machine or vehicle faulting on a wireless timeout can stop the whole line, so a single client's dropout is measured in lost production, not lost packets.
Lean practice builds deliberate stops into production. An andon system signals whenever an abnormality occurs, and in its fixed-position form the line stops not immediately, but after the product reaches a predetermined position. Jidoka gives machines and operators the ability to detect an abnormal condition and immediately stop work.
Unplanned stops are the other kind, and NIST notes that for many OT processes unexpected outages are unacceptable. When a wireless dropout causes one, the line sets the cost, not the radio. A downtime survey published by Siemens puts a lost hour at $2.3 million in a large automotive plant1 and $36,000 in fast moving consumer goods. Both are one vendor’s estimates, from a report that sells predictive maintenance. Your own figure comes from your line rate and margin.
About this page
Built from 4 sources: 1 standards body or lab, 1 vendor document and 2 other sources. Researched and drafted with AI assistance, then reviewed and approved by Ben Rutter on . How pages are made
- First published
- Last updated
Cite this page
Plain
Ben Rutter. "Line stop." OT Wireless, published October 5, 2026. https://otwireless.com/glossary/line-stop/
APA 7
Rutter, B. (2026, October 5). Line stop. OT Wireless. https://otwireless.com/glossary/line-stop/
BibTeX
@misc{rutter2026linestop,
author = {Rutter, Ben},
title = {{Line stop}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://otwireless.com/glossary/line-stop/}},
organization = {OT Wireless},
}