Downtime is used to measure and classify periods when the machine is unavailable for any reason such as breakdown, jam etc. If you start downtime for a machine which is currently running an operation, the machine clocking for that operation will be stopped since the machine cannot be working on an operation and being down on the same time. The labor time on the operation can continue, or being stopped as well depending on the “Auto Stop Labor Clocking” setting in the Work Center window. It might be logic to have the labor to continue to run if the operation can be continued on another machine, but in other cases it might be suitable to stop the labor automatically as well.
If the operation cannot continue to run on another machine, another great option is to use Stop Production and stop it as Interrupted. The interruption cause can then be connected to a Downtime Cause that automatically starts downtime for the machine. It can also be connected to an indirect job that auto starts indirect time for the employee