Defining and tracking the correct maintenance key performance indicators (KPIs) is critical for optimizing performance in every business area.
There’s a fair amount of truth in the old saying, “What gets measured gets done.” That’s why, when it comes to day-to-day performance, your people need metrics that make it easy to set priorities that will contribute the most to the company's overall success. During and at the end of each shift, the KPIs need to tell people if they are ahead or behind and, in simplest terms, if they’re winning or losing.
Our initial assessment of a plant’s maintenance program starts with a review of its current KPIs. We look at how sophisticated the facility’s metrics are, how frequently they are updated, and how they are used and communicated to team members.
The Key Plant Maintenance KPIs
Maintenance KPIs are different from plant productivity and throughput measures. These are some maintenance KPIs examples:
- Overall maintenance costs
- Percentage of planned (preventive maintenance) vs. unplanned (reactive maintenance) work
- Total and percentage of overtime work
- Stockroom inventory turns
- Percentage of emergency work
- Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
- How much of the facility’s maintenance work is reactive and proactive – which is more cost effective in the long run – by tracking the percentage of maintenance team hours spent on unplanned vs. planned work
- Mean time between failures (MTBF) is a proactive measure used by manufacturers that perform a significant amount of planned and preventive maintenance. MTBF means nothing to maintenance teams that spend most of their time reacting to the latest breakdowns
- Work backlogs
- And so on
The specific performance metrics will vary based on the organization’s level of maintenance maturity. The metrics being used provide clues to both how the department is performing and how it’s being managed.
KPIs for Different Levels of Maintenance Maturity
Mostly Reactive  |
Metrics:
| REACTIVE |
Planning Ahead  |
Metrics:
| PREVENTIVE |
Ability to Take Action Before Failures Happen  |
Metrics
| PREDICTIVE |
As we mentioned, many maintenance departments do very little planned work. They’re often trying to make it through to the end of each shift. To improve performance you might have to start at a higher level, such as overall maintenance costs or workorder backlog. As department performance improves, that backlog can be further broken down. The percentage of work orders that are 30/60/90 days old, for example, will show how well the backlog is being managed.
One improvement target that we’ve used in a number of plants is a 1:1 ratio of unplanned to planned work within a certain number of months. At later stages of advancement, that ratio becomes less important and management will want to start tracking Preventive Maintenance (PM) quality and effectiveness. These metrics include the percentage of PM work that’s done according to the schedule and the completion of PM audits, as well as unexpected machine breakdowns.
Performance Could Look Worse Before It Gets Better
There are a couple of additional points that we’d like make on the topic of maintenance KPIs. First, when a facility starts to make the transition from unplanned to more planned and preventive work, the KPIs can look worse for a while. The work-order backlog, for example, will often spike as the team tracks requests more formally through the CMMS (computerized maintenance management system), instead of simply responding to emails and phone calls as they come in.
Second, metrics like overall equipment effectiveness, equipment uptime and machine availability, which are frequently associated with maintenance performance, often end up being used more as clubs to beat up the maintenance team. These numbers are heavily influenced by production decisions, which doesn’t make them true maintenance KPIs.
Finally, the measures that are meaningful at an early stage of maturity will be less useful as a facility gets further down the road. As we stated in the beginning, the KPIs need to tell the maintenance team how they are doing every day. People need to know if they are winning or falling behind.
A well-defined manufacturing maintenance strategy is critical for operating efficiently while maximizing equipment availability.
