How do you calculate technician utilization?

Divide productive technician hours by available technician hours and multiply by 100. With 8 productive hours against 250 available hours, utilization is 8 / 250 x 100 = 3.2%.

What is a good technician utilization rate in a repair depot?

Most well-run depots target 75-90% productive utilization. Above 90% you lose surge buffer and risk quality; below 65% usually signals parts delays, poor scheduling, or overstaffing for current volume.

Why is my utilization so low?

A very low number like the 3.2% in the example usually means the productive and available hours are on different scales (one shift of productive hours against a month of available hours). Always match the period of both inputs before reading the result.

Utilization vs. productivity: what is the difference?

Utilization measures how much of the available time was used on productive work. Productivity (or efficiency) measures output per hour against a standard. A tech can be fully utilized yet unproductive if jobs take longer than the standard time.

How do I close a utilization gap to target?

With a gap of 91.8 points to a 95% target, attack the biggest time sinks first: kit parts ahead of the job, pre-stage diagnostics, batch similar SKUs, and remove admin from the bench. Then re-measure with matched time periods.

Should training and meetings count as available hours?

Decide once and stay consistent. Many depots exclude scheduled training, breaks, and all-hands from available hours so utilization reflects only billable bench capacity, then track training separately.

Electronics Repair, Refurbishment & Depot Operations calculator

Technician Utilization Calculator

Technician utilization measures the share of paid technician time actually spent on productive repair and refurbishment work, versus time lost to parts waiting, diagnostics queues, idle benches, or admin. Depot managers and service operations leads use it to size headcount, justify a second shift, and tell whether a backlog is a capacity problem or a flow problem. On a refurbishment floor where labor is the dominant cost, a five-point swing in utilization changes your cost per unit and your SLA cushion. It is the single most-watched efficiency number on most electronics depot dashboards.

What this calculator does

Measure how much available repair technician time is spent on productive diagnostic, repair, refurbishment, test, and documentation work.
Use it when technician utilization in electronics repair, refurbishment and depot operations needs a clean rate and gap-to-target you can put on a tier board.
It divides productive technician hours by available scheduled technician hours, expresses the result as a percentage, and compares it to your target.

Formula used

Technician utilization = productive technician hours ÷ available technician hours × 100
Technician utilization gap to target = technician utilization - target technician utilization

Inputs explained

Productive bench-repair technician hours:
Available technician hours scheduled:
Target technician utilization:

How to use the result

Use it weekly or per shift to track bench efficiency, and during capacity planning when deciding whether to add technicians or extend hours.
High utilization is not automatically good: pushing past roughly 90% leaves no slack for surge volume, training, or process improvement, and can mask quality shortcuts.

Current U.S. benchmarks

As of May 2026, U.S. manufacturing runs at 75.6% of capacity (Federal Reserve via FRED), up 0.2 points from a year earlier. Enter your own plant's utilization; the national figure is a reference point for how loaded the industry is.
The producer price index for copper and brass mill shapes stands at 559.593 (BLS, May 2026), up 76.8% from a year earlier. Quotes priced off last quarter's material cost miss this move. Global copper trades at $13,484 per tonne (IMF via FRED, May 2026).
The U.S. has 11,261 computer and electronic products establishments employing about 815,443 workers (Census County Business Patterns, 2023).

Common questions

How do you calculate technician utilization? Divide productive technician hours by available technician hours and multiply by 100. With 8 productive hours against 250 available hours, utilization is 8 / 250 x 100 = 3.2%.
What is a good technician utilization rate in a repair depot? Most well-run depots target 75-90% productive utilization. Above 90% you lose surge buffer and risk quality; below 65% usually signals parts delays, poor scheduling, or overstaffing for current volume.
Why is my utilization so low? A very low number like the 3.2% in the example usually means the productive and available hours are on different scales (one shift of productive hours against a month of available hours). Always match the period of both inputs before reading the result.
Utilization vs. productivity: what is the difference? Utilization measures how much of the available time was used on productive work. Productivity (or efficiency) measures output per hour against a standard. A tech can be fully utilized yet unproductive if jobs take longer than the standard time.
How do I close a utilization gap to target? With a gap of 91.8 points to a 95% target, attack the biggest time sinks first: kit parts ahead of the job, pre-stage diagnostics, batch similar SKUs, and remove admin from the bench. Then re-measure with matched time periods.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.