Maintenance Metrics and KPIs: How to Monitor and Which Ones to Track

Measuring progress towards achieving maintenance goals is one of the key factors that determine the success of a production system. Maintenance metrics and KPIs serve exactly this purpose: to provide companies and professionals in Facility Management with the necessary parameters and indicators to evaluate their performance and operational capabilities over time.

Below, we will take a closer look at the meaning and importance of maintenance metrics and KPIs, trying to understand the characteristics that differentiate them. We will also provide a detailed list of the most important metrics that every organization should track to optimize business processes and improve the effectiveness of maintenance practices.

Before delving into the topic, I suggest using a Facility Management software to best manage all activities related to monitoring metrics and KPIs; this tool is indeed an indispensable support for achieving essential maintenance goals.

What are maintenance KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators, simply known as KPIs, are reference parameters linked to business objectives that aim to monitor the progress and effectiveness of the most strategic processes, providing useful information about an organization’s overall performance.

Maintenance KPIs, specifically, help companies and facility managers quantify, through the analysis of maintenance data, the progress made in maintenance, highlighting already achieved results, goals yet to be reached, and all actions to be taken to meet a specific objective.

If an organization’s ultimate goal is, for example, to reduce production costs by a certain amount, since maintenance is one of the factors that directly influence the achievement of this goal, it can be useful for a company to monitor performance indices related to departmental expenses, equipment downtime, and the proper management of work orders.

Importance of KPIs in maintenance management

As mentioned, maintenance KPIs measure the company’s performance in achieving its maintenance goals, such as reducing downtime or cutting costs. These, along with other values monitored by maintenance KPIs, represent benchmarks for every company, highlighting the performance of the implemented maintenance process and revealing any gaps that hinder the achievement of final objectives.

Of course, each company sets different maintenance goals based on the specific sector in which it operates, but the importance of certain key indicators is shared, including:

• efficiency of maintenance processes;
• costs and expenses of interventions;
• safety and regulatory compliance;
• performance of activities;
• downtime;
• management of work orders;
• inventory management.

What are maintenance metrics?

Maintenance metrics are well-defined and quantifiable measurements that allow monitoring the daily maintenance activity within a company, and they aim to help industry professionals evaluate the performance of people, machines, resources, processes, and more.

In simpler terms, these measurements provide an accurate and reliable picture of how everything and everyone operates within a facility and are essential for guiding decision-making processes and continuously improving the effectiveness of maintenance practices.

The most common metrics can be divided into three different categories, as follows:

• resource performance metrics, which are used to monitor equipment failure rates and assess the operating conditions of each individual plant or machinery;
• operational metrics, which serve to quantify the effectiveness of maintenance programs and analyze the performance of various departments in achieving their set objectives;
• inventory metrics, which help optimize strategies for controlling, tracking, and managing inventory and spare parts.

Types of maintenance metrics

Maintenance Metrics and KPIs: What is the Difference

Maintenance metrics and KPIs are very similar parameters and are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference between these two concepts as maintenance KPIs are numbers that link the organization’s ultimate goals to maintenance performance, while maintenance metrics connect maintenance performance to the effectiveness of daily maintenance processes.

In other words, key performance indicators serve to set the goals to strive for and to give dimension to the results achieved in relation to the established objectives. Metrics, on the other hand, serve to connect daily maintenance actions to the performance to be monitored and represent the pieces with which it is possible to build the KPIs.

6 Main Maintenance KPIs to Monitor

Maintenance KPIs are vital indicators for ensuring that the maintenance process operates efficiently and effectively. There are various key performance indicators, and their importance is closely related to the application sector, to the goals to be met, and to the type of resources to be managed; consequently, not all KPIs hold the same importance for every company.

However, it is possible to define a list of the most significant parameters on which every organization should focus to evaluate the effects and validity of its maintenance strategies. This list includes:

• the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): this is a parameter that can only be measured for repairable assets and serves to quantify the average time between the occurrence of a failure and the start of the next one, during the normal operation of equipment. The higher the mean time between failures, the greater the capacity of the plant to operate correctly and without interruptions. Knowing how long a specific piece of equipment will last allows for advance preparation for failure events and optimization of preventive maintenance strategies;
• the Mean Time To Repair (MTTR): this is a measure of the maintainability of repairable items and serves to quantify the average time taken by the maintenance team to repair a failed asset. This parameter has a significant impact on an organization’s profits because a value that is too high can lead to delays in order fulfillment or failure to meet business objectives. The Mean Time To Repair specifically includes the time required to diagnose the problem, the repair time, the testing period, and the return to normal operating conditions. Monitoring this metric is key to identifying and eliminating inefficiencies in unplanned maintenance processes;
• resource reliability and availability: at this point, there are actually two KPIs that are both, and complementarily, fundamental for maintenance planning and control (Maintenance Planning and Control MPC). The main objective of MPC is to ensure and increase the availability and reliability of assets that optimize productivity, and it does so precisely through:
  • availability, which is the ability of an element to perform a specific function at a specific time or for a specific period;
  • reliability, defined as the probability that a resource performs its function optimally during a specific time interval (I recommend reading a useful in-depth article on the concept of reliability in the maintenance sphere of an asset);
• backlog: the backlog is defined as an ordered list of tasks to be performed and priorities to be managed to achieve the set maintenance objectives. This parameter specifically refers to the work time required to carry out the listed activities (for this reason, it is expressed in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc.) and provides an idea of the relationship between the workload and the capacity to execute it;
• downtime: unplanned machine downtime obviously causes disruptions and losses in terms of both production and economic factors. The negative impacts of downtime can be divided into two categories:
  • tangible costs: easy to quantify, include losses in capacity, production, labor, inventory, and profits;
  • intangible costs: difficult to calculate, but can be more significant than tangible costs. They include factors such as responsiveness and stress;
• maintenance cost as a percentage of estimated replacement value (MC/ERV): this is an important financial performance indicator and represents a way to analyze the maintenance cost (MC) for each piece of equipment. The importance of this indicator is related to the ability to assess how cost-effective it is to repair or maintain an asset and when it is more convenient to purchase a new one.

KPIs to monitor

How to Measure Maintenance Metrics

Now that we have seen which maintenance metrics are most significant to monitor, let’s try to understand what tools actually allow us to calculate and monitor these parameters.

A good CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is certainly the best solution for gathering accurate information from every resource and obtaining a complete, continuous, and reliable overview of every maintenance process.

These systems are specifically designed to simplify the management of various activities (even remotely) and to provide fully automated reports that help improve decision-making and measure progress towards achieving the final maintenance goals.

Best Practices for Optimizing Performance through KPIs

Identifying the important KPIs for our company is just the first step in optimizing the efficiency of maintenance workflows. The real challenge lies in implementing and utilizing them effectively to optimize performance.

Below are the key steps to help you get the most out of your maintenance KPIs:

• identify relevant KPIs: the first and fundamental step is to choose the right KPIs based on the goals of our company and the type of resources to monitor. If, for example, our priority is to reduce downtime, we can monitor indicators such as Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and equipment downtime. If the goal is cost savings, it will be useful to focus on maintenance cost per unit (MC);
• establish parameters and goals: this step is useful for identifying those parameters that reflect industry standards or your company’s objectives, providing a basis for measuring progress and identifying areas for improvement;
• collect and analyze data: data, their quality, and their analysis are as important as the KPIs. For this purpose, it is useful to implement, as suggested in the previous paragraph, maintenance management information systems (CMMS) to collect and especially analyze accurate information for each KPI;
• act based on information: once the data has been collected and analyzed, it is essential to act quickly to achieve tangible improvements. If the analysis shows that your company’s performance is below expectations, it may be appropriate to take measures to standardize procedures or improve staff training. The goal is, therefore, to use this data to make changes that will have a direct impact on performance;
• communicate results: sharing is crucial for success. It is therefore useful to regularly report KPI data to your team and stakeholders to ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals;
• review and adjust KPIs: the initial selection of KPIs is not static. Performance indicators should evolve along with the company. Regularly reviewing maintenance KPIs and modifying them to align with business objectives or evolving operational realities is essential to ensure maximum operational efficiency.

To optimize maintenance efficiency, there are other good practices to implement, ranging from creating a preventive maintenance program to adequate staff training.

If you are also looking for the right tool to automatically calculate and track the maintenance metrics and KPIs of interest, let yourself be supported immediately by a Facility Management software, the system that helps you analyze the performance of your equipment, eliminates the need for complex manual calculations, and represents a fundamental tool for monitoring any aspect, process, or activity related to the maintenance of your resources.

FAQ – Maintenance KPIs

What are Maintenance KPIs?

Maintenance KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are key indicators used to measure the effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability of maintenance processes. They help companies monitor asset performance, reduce downtime, optimize resources, and contain operational costs.

What are the main KPIs for monitoring downtime?

• Asset availability: the percentage of time an asset is actually available to operate compared to total time.
• Equipment downtime: total unplanned downtime of equipment.
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): average time between one failure and the next.
• Mean Time To Repair (MTTR): average time required to restore an asset after a failure.
• Planned Maintenance Downtime: scheduled downtime for preventive maintenance activities.

How are performance metrics measured in work order management?

• Maintenance backlog: time required to complete all overdue maintenance activities.
• Maintenance overtime: number of overtime hours spent on maintenance activities, useful for identifying excessive workloads or inefficiencies.
• Mean Time to Complete Work Order (MTTC): indicates the average time required to complete a work order, from the moment it is opened until it is closed.
• Schedule compliance: measure of alignment between planned activities and activities actually performed.
• Work order completion rate: percentage of completed work orders compared to those scheduled.

Are there KPIs to monitor maintenance costs?

• Cost per work order: measures the average cost incurred for each completed work order.
• Maintenance Cost as a Percentage of Replacement Asset Value (MC/RAV): ratio of maintenance cost to the replacement value of assets, useful for assessing the cost-effectiveness of repair versus replacement.
• Maintenance costs: total expenditure for maintenance interventions over a specific period.

Which KPIs help evaluate asset performance?

• Asset reliability: measures the likelihood that an asset will function correctly for a specific period without failures.
• Failure rate: this KPI measures the frequency with which an asset fails within a given period. It is essential for assessing the stability and predictability of an asset’s performance over the long term.
• Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE): combines availability, performance, and quality to measure the overall efficiency of equipment.
• Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP): indicates the percentage of preventive maintenance compared to the total.

Why is it important to monitor Maintenance KPIs?

Maintenance KPIs allow for the identification of inefficiencies, optimization of resource use, reduction of costs, prevention of unexpected failures, and improvement of plant reliability. Without measurable data, it is impossible to implement continuous improvement strategies in maintenance.

What is the difference between maintenance KPIs and maintenance metrics?

• KPIs are directly linked to strategic business objectives and measure the overall effectiveness of processes.
• Metrics are more specific and operational measures that feed into KPIs, such as the number of interventions, hours worked, or average times.

How can maintenance KPIs be effectively analyzed?

Using a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is essential for automatically collecting and analyzing real-time data, generating reports, and supporting strategic decisions based on reliable and up-to-date information.