Author: Ethan Wilke

Why Create an Asset Naming Convention?

Naming is a key component of managing assets in a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Using consistent asset names in a CMMS, you can identify assets more easily, search and query data more effectively, and make valuable data more readily available.

However, CMMS software limits the number of characters allowed in a given data field, making it necessary to rethink how assets will be named in the system. Now, you may be asking what the best way is to design your naming scheme. In truth, you can format asset names any way you wish…although there are some generally accepted best practices which we encourage you to follow. These practices are outlined in our article, How to Create Your Own Asset Naming Convention.

Asset naming conventions vary from organization to organization. The naming scheme your company uses is entirely up to you! The purpose of this article is to provide you with a few options to consider when crafting your asset naming convention: 1) using an existing internal naming convention, 2) using a tried-and-true system, and 3) creating your own naming convention.

3 Asset Naming Convention Designs to Consider

Follow an Existing Internal Asset Naming Convention

Remember, it is not only the maintenance team that needs to track maintenance assets. The accounting department is also responsible for tracking all assets and their costs, such as original purchase price, depreciation, and maintenance expenses. It should be no surprise that the accounting team also values a good naming convention.

Making use of an existing internal naming convention can be beneficial, as it allows for better cross-department communication about maintenance assets. Look to see how your organization’s accounting department names assets and consider if it will work for you. If you are unsatisfied with their naming system, you should still track the number in your CMMS. Doing so ensures that both departments have a common reference when referring to the same asset.

Below are some advantages and disadvantages of this asset naming convention option:

Advantages:

• Easy to Implement or Adopt: Asset names and numbers have already been assigned by an internal resource. All you must do is match names and numbers to the asset records in your CMMS.
• Improved Communication: A single naming system leads to better cross-departmental communication between maintenance, accounting, purchasing, and others.

Disadvantages:

• May Not Meet Requirements: The naming convention may not meet your maintenance management requirements if it was developed with a different purpose in mind.
• Possibility of Change: It is possible that the base naming convention may change, creating a mismatch between your asset records and data in other systems.

Rely on Tried-and-True Asset Naming Systems

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There are already a number of tried-and-true naming conventions out there. For instance, your vendors may already use a naming system that you can easily adopt. Employees may also offer ideas of what worked well based on their previous work experience.

A well-vetted, proven asset naming system is the United States Department of Defense’s National Stock Number (NSN) system. Regarded as the gold standard in asset naming, domestic and foreign governments across the world use the NSN system because it provides a standardized asset naming system for a large number of items – as many as 6 million items (and counting)!

National Stock Number Anatomy. Image derived from Wikipedia – click image to visit page.

The National Stock Number itself is made up of smaller subgroups, each with their own coding system. The 4-digit Federal Supply Classification Group (FSCG) number is comprised of the Federal Supply Group (FSG) and Federal Supply Class (FSC) numbers.

The next portion is the 9-digit National Item Identification Number (NIIN). The first two digits are the National Codification Bureau (NCB) number, a “country code” or “nation code” that represents the nation assigning the item number. For example, the United States is represented by “00” or “01”; Canada’s code is “20” or “21”. The remaining 7 digits are sequentially assigned, unique numbers.

Aside from the asset number itself, the NSN system also seeks to establish a simple, common description for each tracked asset. For example, a CNC lathe might be described as “CNC, 4-axis, 3000 RPM.” This link provides a thorough explanation of the National Stock Number (NSN) system and can be a good research document for those interested in studying further.

Of course, even widely used naming systems aren’t “one size fits all” solutions. Just because you are basing your asset naming convention on a tried-and-true system doesn’t mean that you can’t make changes. You can take the elements that apply most and modify it for what makes the most sense for your organization.

Below are some advantages and disadvantages of this asset naming convention option:

Advantages:

• Trustworthy: Other organizations have used the naming system with great success, giving you the confidence that your asset naming convention will also be successful.
• Easy to Use: Well-established naming systems provide a template from which you can easily assign names and numbers to your assets.
• Best Practices: Tried-and-true naming conventions are regarded as best practice, which may not necessarily be true with internal or custom naming systems.

Disadvantages:

• Complexity: Some naming conventions consist of many separate coding systems, making it tedious to follow or apply.
• Too Large of a Scope: Naming systems such as the NSN tracks millions of assets. You may not require the same level of detail if managing a small number of assets. A simpler naming strategy may be more appropriate.

Create Your Own Asset Naming Convention

While it is convenient to base your asset naming convention off of an existing one, other schemes are not always easily adapted to your needs. Instead, you can create your own naming system. Custom-made naming systems provide the flexibility to make asset numbers and names more meaningful for your team.

For example, you can build meaning into asset numbers by incorporating information such as asset type, manufacturer, model, building number, and more. For more detail, read our article How to Create Your Own Asset Naming Convention. Below are some advantages and disadvantages of this asset naming convention option:

Advantages:

• Flexibility: Since you are not locked in to a previously-defined set of naming rules, you can incorporate any information of your choosing to make names and numbers more meaningful to your team.
• Meets Your Specific Requirements: You know your maintenance needs the best. A custom naming convention gives you the exact information your organization requires.

Disadvantages:

• Time to Develop: It takes careful planning, time, and effort to devise the rules and requirements that must be adhered to when naming assets.
• Longevity: Custom naming conventions that aren’t built with enough flexibility break down over time, creating the need to change the system.

Manage Your Assets with FTMaintenance

FTMaintenance asset management software allows organizations of all sizes to effectively track their maintenance assets. To help you use FTMaintenance most efficiently, we offer CMMS consulting services that can be used to help your team evaluate and develop asset naming conventions. We draw on over 30 years of experience in industrial automation to make maintenance management easy for our customers. Contact us to learn more about FasTrak’s FTMaintenance consulting services.

Unfortunately, not much attention is given to the process of naming assets. Can you imagine identifying tens to thousands of assets based solely on a description? Not only would it be exhausting and confusing, it would be highly inefficient. In this article, we cover the basics of asset naming conventions.

What is an Asset Naming Convention?

Asset naming conventions make asset identification easy, both in real life and in your CMMS.

In relation to implementing computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, an asset naming convention defines how your assets will be referenced in the system. As mentioned in our article, What is Asset Management?, identification plays an important role in asset management. Asset naming conventions are developed to remove any vagueness and ambiguity when communicating about maintenance assets.

Why Naming Assets Matters

By looking at the name alone, stakeholders should be able to tell what an asset is and where it belongs. While you could name assets willy-nilly, if you want to meet the goals of efficient communication and analysis, asset names must be standardized.

Naming Convention Example: Corporate Email Addresses

To demonstrate, let’s look at a naming convention for corporate email addresses:

A very common way to assign email addresses to employees is to use some combination of their first and last name. For example, John Doe’s email address might be jdoe@example.com, john.doe@example.com, or something similar. The next email assigned would follow the same structure – James Smith’s email would start with jsmith or james.smith.

The pattern then continues for each employee – using the first convention, Derek Johnson’s email address starts with djohnson, Alice Matthews’ starts with amatthews, Mike Williams’ mwilliams, and so on.

Based on this naming convention, it is very easy for an employee to determine the email address for Mark Jacobs without knowing it beforehand. Also, there is no confusion as to whom the address belongs. Now, imagine how difficult it would be if employee email addresses did not follow such a structure – it would be very easy to make mistakes and become confused. The same concept applies to the naming of industrial assets.

Importance of Asset Naming Conventions in Maintenance Management

From the corporate email address example, hopefully you’ve identified why standardized asset naming is important. The same benefits apply to maintenance management as well. Here are a few ways asset naming conventions can improve maintenance management:

• Quicker Onboarding of New Employees: You cannot assume that new employees have experience with the types of assets used in your organization. While over time technicians will be able to easily identify assets, it will be difficult for someone new to know the differences between them.
• Brevity: Though manual maintenance management systems allow you to be more verbose and wordy, lengthy descriptions take more time for technicians to decipher. Maintenance software limits the amount of characters that can be used, making it necessary to be short and to the point when describing assets.
• Consistent Data Entry: A clear naming convention makes it easy for users to name new assets during data entry.
• Efficient Use of CMMS: A standardized asset naming convention allows CMMS users to quickly locate existing assets in the system. Additionally, finding and sorting assets becomes easier because data is grouped together in a more logical manner

Further Reading: What is Asset Management?

Track Assets with FTMaintenance

Asset naming conventions are important, but there is more to asset management than naming and numbering. With a proper maintenance management system like FTMaintenance in place, you can identify, locate, track, and report on your maintenance assets. Learn more about FTMaintenance asset management software.

Key Takeaways

• Condition-based maintenance (CbM) is a proactive maintenance technique that focuses on real-time asset performance
• CbM alerts employees when equipment is performing outside of its specified range, prompting maintenance intervention
• Assets with high repair and replacement costs are good candidates for condition-based maintenance
•  Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, like FTMaintenance, tracks maintenance activities related to condition-based maintenance

What is Condition-based Maintenance?

Condition-based maintenance (CbM) is a proactive maintenance technique that uses real-time data (collected through sensors) to identify when an asset’s performance or condition reaches an unsatisfactory level. By observing the state of an asset, a practice known as condition monitoring, maintenance professionals can identify when an asset is about to fail or has failed. With CbM, maintenance work is performed only when needed in response to the asset’s real condition, preventing unnecessary maintenance tasks.

Condition-based Maintenance (CbM) vs. Predictive Maintenance (PdM)

Though condition-based maintenance and predictive maintenance (PdM) have some overlap and are often used interchangeably, they are not technically the same. CbM focuses on real-time asset performance and conditions, and alerts you the exact moment monitored parameters are out of bounds. For example, a sensor reading taken from an oil pump may show a major drop in pressure, indicating that a component has failed.

Predictive maintenance utilizes real-time asset data, like CbM, in addition to predictive analysis to determine when an asset will fail in the future. To continue our previous example, sensor readings from an oil pump may be used to forecast when an issue will occur or is beginning to form. As you can see, while both CbM and PdM use condition monitoring, the key difference is timing – what is the condition of an asset right now (CbM) versus what might the condition of the asset be in the future (PdM).

How Condition-based Maintenance Works

Condition-based maintenance consists of three steps: 1) capturing sensor data, 2) communicating data, and 3) performing maintenance work.

Capturing Sensor Data

Condition-based maintenance monitors asset performance through non-destructive testing carried out by condition-monitoring sensors. These sensors check conditions, such as vibration, temperature, and pressure, while assets are in operation. They may be provided by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), be integral to the equipment, or purchased and retrofitted after initial installation. Common condition-monitoring sensors include:

• Accelerometers: Measure vibration, velocity, and displacement.
• Infrared Cameras: Detect heat and displays results on a thermal image.
• Fluid Condition Sensors: Observe the condition of a fluid such as oil.
• Tank Level Sensors: Monitor the level of fluid in a tank.
• Pressure Transducers: Measure the pressure of liquids and gases.
• Ammeters: Gauge the current running through a circuit.

Communicating Data

Trained maintenance technicians can view data captured by sensors to better understand an asset’s current condition before performing maintenance work.

Once a sensor has found that a monitored parameter is out of its normal operating range, it must communicate that information to a human employee who can provide a remedy. Notifications can take many forms. A programmable logic controller (PLC) that runs a machine may notify a technician that service is required in a variety of ways like, for example, turning on a stack light. A human-machine interface (HMI) or SCADA system may turn on a warning light, sound an alarm, display a message, or send a text or email notification. Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software may auto-generate a work order.

Performing Maintenance Work

When a monitored condition creates an alarm or notification, the maintenance team is dispatched to fix the problem. Based on the resolution, the maintenance team will create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that provide technicians with step-by-step instructions on how to solve the issue. SOPs are then included on maintenance work orders generated by CMMS software, enabling technicians to respond faster and perform repairs with higher quality and consistency. Maintenance personnel also document their work in the CMMS once work is complete.

Advantages of Condition-based Maintenance

As part of an overall maintenance management strategy, condition-based maintenance provides the following advantages:

• Optimized Time Spent on Maintenance: Condition-based maintenance is performed as needed, maintenance teams can optimize the use of their time.
• Less Disruption of Production: Some issues identified by CbM can be corrected without shutting down equipment, ensuring higher availability for production.
• Lowered Chance of Catastrophic Failure: Condition-monitoring sensors catch problems the moment they happen, allowing technicians to respond quickly before more serious problems develop.
• Reduced Asset Downtime: When properly configured, CbM can be associated with specific failure modes. This allows the maintenance team to quickly diagnose possible causes, thereby increasing the speed of response times and reducing downtime.

Disadvantages of Condition-based Maintenance

Every maintenance approach has drawbacks. The following list outlines some of the challenges with CbM:

• High Sensor Costs: Cost of purchasing, installing, and maintaining condition-monitoring sensors and related software can exceed the total benefit of reduction on failures and downtime.
• Unpredictable Peak Times: Condition-based maintenance events are unplanned and may result in periods where multiple assets need attention at the same time.
• Difficulty in Choosing Sensors: Sensors come in many different types, sizes, and shapes, making it a challenge to select the right one.
• Reliability of Sensors: Sensors installed and used in harsh locations have the potential to become damaged, perform incorrectly, and provide faulty readings. Wireless sensors rely on the strength of the company’s Wi-Fi signal to consistently communicate data.
• Required Expertise: A high level of technical knowledge by staff is necessary to implement and maintain sensors, use related software, and interpret sensor data.

When to Use Condition-based Maintenance

The decision whether to use condition-based maintenance depends on the expected return on investment (ROI). Organizations must assess the amount of risk involved if an asset fails by asking questions like:

• How critical are potential failures?
• What does it cost to resolve failures?
• Are those failures likely to recur?

Highly critical production assets with high repair and replacement costs are usually the best candidates for a condition-based maintenance program. Typically, CbM is used in large, asset-intensive organizations including automotive suppliers, oil and gas, facilities with complex building automation systems, utilities, and organizations that rely on fleet vehicles.

Read On: Explore our Industries page to see how FTMaintenance supports your industry.

FTMaintenance Supports Condition-based Maintenance

Maintenance professionals track condition-based maintenance activities in CMMS software like FTMaintenance. FTMaintenance provides a single platform for documenting, managing, and tracking CbM work orders and maintenance resources. Schedule a demo today to discover how FTMaintenance can support your condition-based maintenance operation.

Assets that fail unexpectedly result in costly downtime, lost productivity, and safety risks. While preventive maintenance can reduce the likelihood of failures, it doesn’t account for an asset’s actual condition and often leads to over-maintenance.

Predictive maintenance (PdM) helps organizations anticipate equipment failures by leveraging real-time data, allowing them to perform maintenance only when truly necessary. In this article, we explore how predictive maintenance enables a more proactive, data-driven approach to failure prevention.

What is Predictive Maintenance?

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is a proactive maintenance technique that uses real-time asset data (collected through sensors), historical performance data, and advanced analytics to forecast when an asset failure will occur.

Using data collected by condition-monitoring devices during normal operation, predictive maintenance software uses advanced formulas (called algorithms) to compare real-time data against known measurements and accurately predict asset failure. This data is often integrated and managed within a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), which helps track asset data and schedule work orders based on these predictions.

Advanced PdM techniques may incorporate cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). The result of PdM is that maintenance work can be scheduled and performed before an asset is expected to fail, thereby helping minimize downtime.

Preventive Maintenance vs. Predictive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance (PM) and predictive maintenance share a common goal – to stop asset failures before they happen. However, they differ in their approach.

In a typical PM program, maintenance activities are commonly scheduled according to strict time-based or usage-based intervals, manufacturer recommendations, or as a result of inspections. While useful, these methods only detect obvious problems based on one’s sense of sight, sound, touch, and smell.

Predictive maintenance relies on data gathered through condition-monitoring sensors that can detect internal wear that cannot be directly observed, is too dangerous for humans to inspect, or would otherwise require equipment to be shut down and opened up. Maintenance events are then scheduled based on an asset’s real condition and performance, and performed only when needed.

Condition-based Maintenance vs. Predictive Maintenance

Condition-based maintenance (CbM) and predictive maintenance are closely related strategies, but differ in how and when they trigger maintenance tasks.

CbM involves monitoring equipment in real time or at set intervals to measure whether equipment performance exceeds predefined thresholds. For example, a work order may be triggered if a vibration reading goes beyond an acceptable limit. While this approach prevents some failures, it is still largely reactive – maintenance is only performed when warning signs are already present.

Predictive maintenance takes condition monitoring a step further by using advanced analytics and machine learning to detect subtle patterns in sensor data that indicate future failure. This proactive approach gives maintenance teams more time to act or schedule maintenance well-before failure occurs.

How Predictive Maintenance Works

Predictive maintenance involves three main components:

1. Capturing sensor data
2. Communicating data
3. Making predictions via data analysis.

Let’s use an analogy to explain: think of the weather forecast provided by your local TV news station. To provide an accurate weather forecast, meteorologists collect and analyze weather data obtained from multiple sources, such as Doppler Radars, satellites, and surface-level weather stations. These devices measure conditions such as air temperature, wind speed, and barometric pressure, and send the data to a database.

With the assistance of computer-based modeling and analytics tools, meteorologists are able to turn the stored data into a weather forecast presented to viewers. Based on the forecast, viewers can prepare for the days ahead, including how to dress, what road conditions are expected, and how travel times may be affected. Predictive maintenance works in a similar way.

Although you cannot control all events, with an accurate prediction you can often prevent asset failure. Just as meteorologists rely on specialized tools to measure weather patterns, predictive maintenance depends on multiple technologies to monitor asset health.

Capturing Sensor Data

Predictive maintenance utilizes sensors and nondestructive testing to evaluate an asset’s performance and condition. Condition-monitoring sensors can perform spot checks at regular intervals or continuously monitor assets while they are in normal operation. Common condition-monitoring technologies include:

• Infrared thermography: Detects temperature using infrared imaging.
• Acoustic monitoring: “Listens” for sonic and ultrasonic frequencies.
• Current analysis: Measures voltage and electrical current.
• Corona detection: Identifies electrical discharge.
• Vibration analysis: Monitors displacement, velocity, or acceleration to identify vibration patterns.
• Oil analysis: Checks lubrication of machinery and assesses oil condition.

Communicating Data

Once sensors have captured equipment condition and performance data, it must be stored and analyzed. One advanced communication technology is called the Internet of Things (IoT), where equipment sensors send and share information via a wired or wireless internet connection. Data is sent to, and stored in, a database where it awaits analysis.

Making Predictions

The defining function of predictive maintenance is the ability to forecast when an asset will fail. This capability is what sets PdM apart from condition-based maintenance. Data is collected and analyzed using algorithms to compare an asset’s current performance against its expected performance, determine the level of deterioration, and estimate when maintenance will be needed.

More advanced PdM programs apply machine learning to historical failure patterns, using sophisticated models to more accurately predict remaining useful life (RUL). These models improve over time as they learn from additional data, making predictions increasingly more accurate and reliable.

However, the accuracy of predictive maintenance depends heavily on the quality of the data collected. If sensors are improperly calibrated, data is incomplete, or CMMS records are outdated, the predictions generated by PdM algorithms may be unreliable. Therefore, in addition to their regular maintenance work, maintenance teams must regularly verify that sensors are functioning properly.

CMMS software supports predictive maintenance by providing historical equipment data for use in predictive algorithms. It also contributes to maintenance planning by generating, scheduling and tracking work orders based on predictive analysis.

Advantages of Predictive Maintenance

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Operations and Maintenance Best Practices Guide reports that predictive maintenance can reduce maintenance costs by up to 30%, eliminate breakdowns by up to 70%, and increase equipment uptime by as much as 35%. In addition, predictive maintenance offers these additional benefits:

• Improved Ease of Maintenance Scheduling: Since the need for service is known well-before work is actually required, activities can be scheduled when equipment is available for maintenance.
• Increased Asset Uptime: Assets can remain in operation until maintenance is truly warranted. Other strategies may cause excessive downtime due to over-maintaining, under-maintaining, or unexpected breakdowns. By relying on actual equipment condition, PdM minimizes unnecessary downtime.
• Combined Benefits of Other Maintenance Techniques: PdM combines the proactive nature of preventive maintenance with the real-time monitoring of CbM to deliver optimal timing and resource use.
• Lower MRO Inventory Costs: Predictive maintenance helps maintenance teams better forecast inventory demand, reducing last-minute purchases, expedited shipping costs, and excess MRO inventory.
• Improved Safety: PdM helps identify and address potential failures before they become more severe, helping to reduce the risk of equipment-related damage and accidents.

Disadvantages of Predictive Maintenance

Even with all its benefits, be aware of some of the potential drawbacks of predictive maintenance.

• Large Upfront Cost: A predictive maintenance program requires a large investment in condition monitoring hardware, advanced analytical software, employee training, and man-hours to purchase and install. These costs can be a barrier to smaller organizations or those with limited budgets.
• Required Expertise: PdM requires staff with specialized knowledge in sensor technology, data interpretation, and software tools. These technical skills may not be readily available in every organization.
• Not Cost-Effective for All Assets: PdM is best applied to mission critical, high-value assets. Simpler maintenance strategies may offer a better return on investment for low cost, non-critical equipment.

When to Use Predictive Maintenance

Deciding whether to use predictive maintenance depends largely on its return on investment (ROI). That is, whether the cost savings from avoiding unplanned downtime and extending asset life will outweigh the costs of implementation. Organizations should also consider an asset’s criticality and repair vs. replacement cost. PdM is most valuable for high-value, production-critical assets whose failure significantly disrupts operations.

Industries with remote or mobile assets – such as oil and gas, utilities, and fleet maintenance – also benefit from predictive maintenance, as it reduces the need for frequent site visits and allows maintenance to be scheduled only when necessary.

Additionally, compliance with industry standards or contractual obligations may require adopting predictive maintenance practices. For example, international standards such as ISO 17359 provide best practices for condition monitoring and diagnostics, which some organizations adopt to meet customer expectations, regulatory oversight, or quality certifications.

However, predictive maintenance is not the right fit for all assets. For example, using sensors to monitor a facility’s roof for leaks would require numerous sensors, without a guarantee they’d be placed in areas where issues actually occur. In such cases, preventive maintenance tasks, such as regular inspections, are more practical and cost-effective. Similarly, for assets that are inexpensive or easily replaced, setting up a PdM program may outweigh any potential savings.

It is important to understand that implementing a predictive maintenance program is not immediate. Organizations may spend several months collecting baseline performance data, fine-tuning predictive algorithms, and integrating their CMMS. While the long-term payoff can be substantial, it requires careful planning, consistent data input, and ongoing evaluation to achieve ROI.

Anticipate Equipment Failures with FTMaintenance Select

Predictive maintenance is an advanced maintenance strategy that helps you avoid unnecessary downtime and maintenance intervention. While implementing PdM is a large undertaking, it is more manageable with the right tools in place.

FTMaintenance Select is a comprehensive CMMS solution that helps you document, manage, and track maintenance activities from a single platform, regardless of which maintenance strategies you use. Our work order software automates work order creation, notification, distribution, and completion to help you stay ahead of issues and keep operations running smoothly. Mobile CMMS extends your CMMS to technicians in the field, allowing real-time work order management while on the go. Request a demo today to see how FTMaintenance Select empowers you to become more proactive about failure prevention.

Key Takeaways:

• Facility management encompasses the management of physical workplaces, people, and support services
• Maintenance functions support the day-to-day and long-term operational goals of facilities
• Facilities maintenance teams greatly benefit from using computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, like FTMaintenance

Whether it is a manufacturing plant, a hospital, or an apartment complex, all types of facilities must be properly managed to stay functional. Though the concept of facility management is not new, its meaning has evolved as buildings have become more complex. This article provides a brief introduction to facility management.

What is Facility Management?

First, let’s define what is meant by “facility.” While many people associate the word facility with industrial buildings and factories, a facility can be simply defined as “a place for doing something.” Therefore, facilities include schools, hotels, hospitals, offices, and other spaces.

Now, we can define facility management. There are many definitions out there, including the following:

• From the International Facility Management Association (IFMA): “A profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality, comfort, safety, and efficiency of the built environment by integrating people, place, process, and technology.”
• From the International Standards Organization (ISO): “An organizational function which integrates people, place, and process within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of the core business.”

While each of these definitions is correct, they are a bit technical. For this article, facility management (FM) is defined as the coordination of physical workplaces (facilities), people, and support services in order to support a business’s goals in the most cost effective way possible.

Why Facility Management is Important

Simply put, facility management adds value to a business by addressing many of its immediate and long-term needs. When properly done, facility management activities reduce maintenance costs, ensure the well-being of employees, and protect the business from liability. Continuity planning helps organizations prepare for growth and develop contingency plans for emergencies. Ultimately, facility management creates a productive environment that allows the organization to focus on its core mission and goals.

Components of Facility Management

The components of facility management are commonly divided into two groups, hard services and soft services, which are described in the following sections. Keep in mind that the scope of facility management covers a broad range of functions and activities. The mixture of responsibilities is unique to each organization, and not every one performs each function.

Hard Facilities Management Services

Hard services relate to the maintenance and management of any physical part of a building, including assets, space, and infrastructure. These services are typically required by law and are essential to the workplace. Hard facilities management services include:

• Management of planning, construction, design, and relocation projects
• Management of building systems including HVAC, electrical, and plumbing
• Real estate management and leasing
• Preventive maintenance (PM) on buildings, interiors, and assets
• Managing and responding to maintenance requests
• Other capital improvements

Soft Facilities Management Services

Soft services are services related to people, whether they are employees, customers, or tenants. These services make facilities more comfortable, satisfying, and secure. Soft facilities management services include:

• Building security
• Space planning
• Responding to environmental, health, and safety issues, including emergency planning and preparedness
• Catering and food services
• Cleaning, sanitation, and janitorial services
• Groundskeeping, landscaping, and pest control
• Educating others about regulations and compliancy requirements
• Mail management
• Waste management

Facilities Management Operations and Maintenance

With the countless number of assets to maintain throughout an facility, there’s no question that maintenance plays a key role in the facility management. Maintenance ensures that all moving parts of a facility’s operations are well-kept and remain functional. Not only that, but operations and maintenance work together to provide an engaging, productive environment.

Maintenance functions assist with both day-to-day and long-term facilities operations. During everyday operations, the maintenance team resolves unexpected issues, such as repairing a roof leak or fixing a jammed machine. Ideally, facility managers will be alerted of maintenance needs via a maintenance request system.

Facility management also considers long-term maintenance needs. Building systems, such as HVAC, electrical and lighting, plumbing, and security services are monitored through regular preventive maintenance. Repairs can be anticipated through predictive maintenance (PdM), although this type of maintenance is typically only possible in very large organizations.

Aside from maintaining and repairing assets, maintenance inspections are vital to facility operations. Through inspections, facility managers confirm that a workplace is up-to-code and meets regulatory requirements. Doing so keeps people and the environment healthy and safe.

Given all that goes in to facility maintenance, one can imagine the difficulty of tracking maintenance activities by hand. Many organizations track their maintenance activities in computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software.

CMMS for Facility Maintenance Management

Facility management professionals can greatly benefit from using CMMS software. A good CMMS stores all information about your equipment and facility assets, MRO inventory, and employees in one place. Listed below are other features and functionality that make CMMS an essential tool for managing facilities:

Automated Preventive Maintenance Scheduling

Though regular preventive maintenance is a high priority, it’s easy for work orders to fall through the cracks. CMMS software organizes and automates your master preventive maintenance plan. Automated work order scheduling and activation ensures that preventive maintenance activities are performed right on time, every time.

Maintenance Request System

It is important to keep an eye on the maintenance needs across the facility. A maintenance request system allows non-maintenance employees, tenants, and customers to submit requests directly to the maintenance department. Instead of inundating maintenance staff with emails, phone calls, and pages, users submit requests through a simple, online form. By using a single channel to receive requests, unexpected maintenance needs become much easier to manage.

Vendor and Contractor Management

Commonly, organizations outsource some aspect of their facilities management operations. For example, it may be more economical for an HVAC service provider to fix rooftop units instead of hiring a specialist full time. A CMMS tracks vendors that provide maintenance supplies, parts, and services. Some solutions even provide invoicing, inventory purchasing, and receiving functionality.

Mobile Access

Today’s maintenance technician is constantly on the go. It is inefficient, inconvenient, and at times, impossible for technicians to be tethered to a standard, desktop computer. Modern CMMS systems provide mobile accessibility that allows staff to access work orders and maintenance data on location from internet-connected devices.

Manage Your Facility with FTMaintenance

FTMaintenance CMMS software supports all industries that perform facility maintenance, such as manufacturing plants, government, hospitals, and property management. Learn more about how FTMaintenance facility maintenance software improves facility management.

Read Case Study: Greater Hickory Cooperative Christian Ministry

Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a high-level maintenance philosophy that has spawned much research and analysis from academics. Instead of doing a deep dive into all the tools, techniques, and methodologies involved in TPM, our goal is to introduce the main ideas of total productive maintenance in a simple, straightforward way.

What is Total Productive Maintenance?

Let’s start with a definition of total productive maintenance. Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a system of maintaining and improving the effectiveness of production through assets, employees, and processes that maximize equipment availability. To truly appreciate why TPM was developed, let’s add some context to our TPM definition.

TPM in Manufacturing

Manufacturing and other asset-centric organizations are highly dependent on equipment. In an ideal world, production would be perfect – you would produce high-quality, non-defective goods, as fast as possible, with zero downtime. In reality, there are production losses throughout the manufacturing process. Manufacturers want to reduce and control these losses as much as possible to achieve near-perfect production. (For organizations tracking Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), this means achieving an OEE value that is as close to 100% as possible.)

In order to achieve optimal production, assets must be available when needed for production. Whether automated and run continuously or manually operated and run periodically, money is lost when equipment is stopped. At first, you might think it makes sense to hire additional maintenance staff that can be ready at a moment’s notice. However, overstaffing or idling employees can be very costly as well. Now what?

What if everyone, not just the maintenance team, was responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of production equipment? For instance, what if operators were trained to perform simple preventive maintenance activities on their equipment so the maintenance team could focus on more critical maintenance projects? Taking this idea a step further, what if engineers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) modified their designs to make them easier to use and maintain? These questions led to the invention of the concept of total productive maintenance.

Who Invented Total Productive Maintenance?

The idea of total productive maintenance was first developed in the 1950’s by Seiichi Nakajima, although the phrase wasn’t widely used until years later. Nakajima, a Japanese engineer, served as an interpreter for presentations on preventive maintenance given by American George Smith, someone at the forefront of maintenance improvement philosophy.

Inspired by Smith, Nakajima combined concepts from American preventive maintenance with other maintenance practices such as reliability engineering, quality management, and operator-assisted maintenance into a new process called total productive maintenance (TPM). This early version of TPM was founded on 5S, a workplace organization methodology which includes the following steps: 1) sort, 2) set in order, 3) shine (clean and organize), 4) standardize, and 5) sustain.

The 8 Pillars of TPM

Going beyond the 5S framework set by Nakajima, the Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) further enhanced his idea by incorporating lessons from lean manufacturing. This led to the development of the 8 pillars of TPM, focusing on proactive and preventive maintenance techniques. Let’s briefly describe each pillar:

1. Autonomous maintenance: The responsibility for simple preventive maintenance tasks is placed in the hands of equipment operators.
2. Focused improvement: Small groups work together to identify and eliminate equipment-related losses.
3. Planned maintenance: Scheduled preventive maintenance is based on predicted or measured failure rates.
4. Quality maintenance: Spot checks, inspections, and root cause analysis (RCA) are used to identify and eliminate the causes of defective products.
5. Early equipment management: Changes to equipment design are informed by the knowledge and experience of the people most familiar with it.
6. Training and education: Operators, maintenance staff, and managers are cross-trained in order to fill in knowledge gaps between departments.
7. Safety, health, and environment: Safety-oriented tasks are performed in order to maintain a safe and healthy work environment.
8. Administrative TPM: Improvements are made to administrative functions and office spaces to reduce process losses and eliminate waste.

Who Uses Total Productive Maintenance?

In the 1960’s, Japanese automotive parts supplier Nippondenso (now Denso) was one of the first organizations recognized for employing total productive maintenance, although the components of TPM have changed over time. Today, TPM strategies are still primarily used in the automotive production and supply industry, although elements of total productive maintenance may be used elsewhere in manufacturing and beyond.

Benefits of TPM

Less Unplanned Downtime

As machine operators become more familiar with their equipment, they can more easily recognize when things seem out of the ordinary. Because they are on the front lines and able to spot problems sooner, operators can alert the maintenance team before equipment breaks down. Maintenance can then be planned for a time when it will not interrupt production.

Acknowledges the Importance of Maintenance to the Organization

For too long, maintenance has been viewed as a cost center that does not provide value to the organization. Thankfully, times are changing. With approaches like TPM and reliability centered maintenance (RCM), maintenance is now viewed as vitally important to the business. TPM’s maintenance-oriented approach helps to reinforce the perception that maintenance is something that adds value to the organization.

Safer Work Environment

TPM also brings focus to workplace safety. Introducing or improving safety-related maintenance tasks means that employees are able to work in low-risk environments. When accidents are reduced and potentially dangerous situations are avoided, employees’ attitudes become more positive, which can improve job satisfaction and productivity.

Reduced Backlog

With everyone contributing to maintenance, less pressure is placed on the maintenance team. Over time, the backlog of preventive maintenance jobs and maintenance requests will shrink, freeing up the maintenance team to work on capital improvements and other projects.

Lower Maintenance Costs

Unplanned downtime is costly. TPM’s focus on proactive and preventive maintenance reduces maintenance costs in many ways. For example, equipment that is regularly cleaned, lubricated, and inspected should experience fewer unexpected breakdowns, requiring less maintenance resources.

Predictable maintenance activities allow for better control over MRO inventory stocking levels, ensuring less overstock or expedited inventory purchases. Operators can identify emerging problems with their equipment before they become major failures, resulting in potentially low-cost, less significant repairs.

TPM can also help lower production costs. When equipment is not available, there is a domino effect that can result in stopped production, defective product, idle employees, and employee overtime, not to mention the increased stress of “catching up” when the problem is fixed. When maintenance is viewed as a team effort, production losses due to poor maintenance can be minimized.

Learn more about the advantages of preventive maintenance.

FTMaintenance Supports Total Productive Maintenance

In order for TPM to be successful, you must have a system for tracking maintenance activities. FTMaintenance is a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that supports any maintenance strategy by providing a single platform for documenting and tracking maintenance activities. See how FTMaintenance can help you improve your maintenance operations by scheduling your demo today.

In today’s complex industrial environments, organizations rely on a range of maintenance strategies to keep assets running efficiently and reliably. While investments in condition-monitoring and artificial intelligence-assisted predictive analysis are on the rise, simple time-based maintenance (TbM) is still widely used. In this article, we explore what time-based maintenance is and where it fits within broader maintenance strategies.

What is Time-based Maintenance?

Time-based maintenance (TbM) is a preventive maintenance strategy where maintenance tasks are performed at fixed time intervals based on an asset’s expected lifespan. This approach is based on the idea that failures are predictable and occur at regular frequencies. Depending on the asset, type of failure, and risk, intervals may be days, weeks, months, and even years. Time-based maintenance is also referred to as periodic maintenance or calendar-based maintenance.

Time-based maintenance is used as a way to balance the cost of frequent maintenance with the cost of unplanned downtime by carefully selecting appropriate maintenance intervals. These intervals may be derived from manufacturer recommendations, work order history, regulatory maintenance standards, and performance metrics like Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).

Check out our article about asset management KPIs.

The goal is to find a sweet spot between too much and too little maintenance. Over-maintenance leads to unnecessary downtime, wasted time, and increased labor costs and part usage. Additionally, frequent interactions with equipment increase the risk of human error, which can reduce reliability. Under-maintenance causes problems to go unnoticed, leading to more severe – and usually more costly – failures.

Time-based Maintenance (TbM) vs. Condition-based Maintenance (CbM)

When it comes to proactively preventing equipment failures, organizations are often faced with the decision of using time-based or condition-based maintenance. Each strategy aims to service equipment before failures occur, but differ in how they determine when to perform maintenance.

Time-based maintenance (TbM) is performed on fixed intervals, regardless of the equipment’s actual physical condition. It is often used as a starting point for preventive maintenance because it is low cost and simple to schedule. A similar strategy is usage-based maintenance, which triggers maintenance based on equipment’s operating time instead of time intervals.

Condition-based maintenance (CbM) is performed based on equipment’s actual condition using data collected through condition-monitoring sensors. It is an advanced, data-driven strategy that allows organizations to schedule maintenance only when equipment is showing signs of decreased performance or imminent failure. While more precise than time-based maintenance, it requires more advanced infrastructure and upfront investment.

Learn more about condition-based maintenance.

Examples of Time-Based Maintenance

Periodic maintenance is required to keep assets in proper operating condition. Time-based maintenance examples include:

• Inspecting safety shut-off systems monthly
• Cleaning HVAC coils quarterly
• Testing emergency lighting and alarms every month
• Replacing air filters annually
• Inspecting rooftop air handlers seasonally

Benefits of Time-Based Maintenance

Time-based maintenance offers a straightforward, non-technical approach to preventive maintenance. This simplicity provides many benefits to maintenance teams:

• Predictable Schedules: TbM follows a strict time interval, making maintenance activities consistent and easy to plan.
• Ease of Implementation: Compared to more advanced strategies like condition-based maintenance, TbM does not require additional infrastructure to support maintenance activities.
• Less Unplanned Downtime: As a form of preventive maintenance, TbM addresses minor issues before they progress into more costly breakdowns.
• Simplified Procurement: Parts used in TbM have predictable demand, which makes inventory management and ordering easier.
• Effective for Continuously Running Assets: Wear and tear is more predictable for assets that run continuously, allowing maintenance work to be scheduled at regular intervals.
• Supports Regulatory Compliance: Regular inspections help meet legal or industry standards.
• Requires Minimal Staffing or Technical Skill: Maintenance is performed on a fixed schedule, so technicians don’t need advanced diagnostics or specialized training to determine when service is needed.

Ideal for: Time-based maintenance is best for standalone equipment or equipment with only one critical component, such as HVAC units, generators, and conveyor belt motors.

Limitations of Time-based Maintenance

Despite its benefits, time-based maintenance should not be used as the sole maintenance strategy. Organizations that rely too heavily on TbM may face the following challenges:

• Misplaced Focus on Failure Causes: According to Reliability Academy, most equipment failures are not age-related. This means that time-based maintenance may not effectively prevent many types of failures and should be supplemented with other maintenance approaches.
• Increased Risk from Over-Maintenance: Performing maintenance too frequently introduces unnecessary risk such as incorrect reassembly, misalignment, or human error, which can lead to unexpected failures.
• Higher Failure Rates Due to Under-Maintenance: Infrequent maintenance increases the risk of avoidable breakdowns, especially for assets with predictable wear patterns.
• Ineffective for Infrequently Used Assets: Assets that are used intermittently do not degrade at the same rate as continuously running equipment. For these, time-based maintenance may result in over-maintenance or wasted resources.
• Increased Costs from Unnecessary Maintenance: Servicing equipment that doesn’t require it leads to unnecessary downtime, labor costs, and use of spare parts or consumables.

For these reasons, time-based maintenance is best used in combination with other strategies such as condition-based or predictive maintenance (PdM) as part of a comprehensive preventive maintenance program.

Further Reading: Keeping Assets Healthy: A Complete Guide to 4 Types of Maintenance

When to Use Time-based Maintenance

How can time-based maintenance fit into your current maintenance strategy? According to a recent study, TbM is a practical choice for equipment that functions as a standalone unit and has predictable failure patterns. It is ideal for assets that have consistent wear and tear, making it easy to schedule maintenance without advanced condition monitoring tools. While TbM is effective in these cases, it should be part of a broader maintenance strategy that accounts for other types of failures.

How a CMMS Supports a TbM Strategy

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a powerful tool for managing your time-based maintenance strategy by leveraging automated work order scheduling and management features. Here are some ways a CMMS supports TbM:

• Robust Asset Tracking: Maintain visibility of your maintainable assets, their condition, and service history.
• Work Order Scheduling: Create a custom, time-based maintenance schedule for each piece of equipment.
• Automatic Work Order Generation: Automatically create work orders using calendar-based or usage-based triggers.
• Maintenance Analytics: Use reports and dashboards to analyze maintenance activity, track KPIs, and determine optimal maintenance intervals.
• On-the-go Access: Empower your team to be more productive by providing access to work orders from mobile devices.

As your maintenance program matures, a CMMS can also support your transition to more advanced strategies, ensuring your system grows with your needs.

Schedule Timely Maintenance with FTMaintenance Select

Despite its simplicity, time-based maintenance is the foundation of many organizations’ preventive maintenance strategies. When managed well, it reduces downtime, extends asset life, and keeps operations running smoothly. FTMaintenance Select CMMS is preventive maintenance software that allows you to optimize your maintenance frequency through flexible calendar- and usage-based scheduling options. Work orders are automatically generated according to your preset schedule, ensuring no maintenance tasks fall through the cracks. Request a demo of FTMaintenance Select to see how you can put time-based maintenance into action.

Historically, maintenance has been viewed as a necessary evil that, while valuable, costs the company money. Although some organizations may still hold this idea to be true, many companies today regard maintenance as an essential part of business operations that has an impact on the bottom line. What accounts for the change in thinking? To find our answer, let’s take a quick look at the history of maintenance.

The First Industrial Revolution

Near the end of the 18^th century, the first Industrial Revolution was just beginning to take shape in the United Kingdom and across Europe, and later made its way to the United States. Steam power started being used for production, and machines were gradually replacing human labor in manufacturing and agriculture.

Overall, the machinery of the time was tough, had basic controls, and was fairly reliable. Also, production demands were not as great as they are today, so avoiding downtime was not a critical concern. Factories employed a “use it until it breaks” mentality and focused largely on corrective maintenance, which was performed primarily by machine operators. Machines that could not be fixed were replaced.

The Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution started in the United States during the mid-to-late 19^th century. During this period, new discoveries and innovations drove manufacturing forward. The discovery of electricity meant that factories could stay open longer and electricity-driven machines could produce products at a much larger scale.

Factories continued to replace people with machines, and Henry Ford’s assembly line further strengthened mass production. Maintenance teams became slightly more proactive and used a basic time-based maintenance (TBM) strategy which involved replacing parts at specific time intervals, whether it was needed or not.

Once the Great Depression hit in the early 20^th century, little money was available to replace machines. Maintenance became a more specialized skill set as employees learned how to fix and repair what was broken. At the same time, machine operators were directed to push equipment to its limits, resulting in frequent failures and high maintenance costs. Unfortunately, rising costs were typically blamed on the maintenance team.

War Production and World War II

In 1939, conflict was spreading throughout Europe and Asia, setting the stage for World War II. Factories in the United States were being converted from producing consumer goods to producing war materials to support Great Britain and other American allies.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt set aggressive goals to out-produce and overwhelm the Axis Powers. As millions of Americans entered the military, their positions in the workforce were taken by millions of women, minorities, and other citizens.

Besides becoming combat pilots, many women started working for military support services, including aircraft maintenance. As the needs to maintain and fix military vehicles and manufacturing equipment became a priority, maintenance started to become an independent function.

The United States Department of War even recruited skilled mechanics and technicians from machine manufacturers, such as John Deere, to serve as a military maintenance units that kept combat equipment in working order.

Aftermath of World War II

Following World War II, war production converted back to domestic goods as soldiers returned home from the battlefields. The strong, post-war economy kicked off the baby boom in the United States, and thriving markets became more competitive. To stay ahead of their rivals, manufacturers sought to increase their production which meant that maintenance costs would also grow if nothing changed. In response, factories began to put more effort into preventive maintenance activities.

Meanwhile, the industrial rebuilding of Japan gave birth to the concept of total productive maintenance (TPM), where small groups of workers were responsible for performing routine maintenance on their own machines to keep the equipment in top operating order.

In the 1960’s, high airplane crash rates caused the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and United Airlines to investigate the effectiveness of preventive maintenance practices in the airline industry. This investigation debunked long-held beliefs that assets and components had a set “lifetime” before they had to be replaced. Under what was called reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), more focus was placed on understanding and prioritizing asset failure and developing plans to better manage those failures. RCM concepts were soon adopted by other asset-intensive industries and large corporations that required maximum uptime.

The Third Industrial Revolution

The rise of electronics in the second half of the 20th century launched a new era of industrial automation. Production processes became more automated thanks to programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and robots. Employee safety became a maintenance concern as highly-performing equipment brought about more risk for accidents. Punch card-based computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) were used in large companies to remind technicians to perform simple maintenance tasks. Later, technicians fill out paper forms, which were then handed to data-entry clerks to type into mainframe computers to track maintenance work for each asset.

Building on the concepts of RCM, maintenance strategies in the 1990’s began using the concept of risk when making maintenance decisions. Risk-based maintenance (RBM) sought to optimize maintenance resources by prioritizing the risk of failure, with high-risk assets being subject to more intensive maintenance programs.

The early ‘90’s also saw the expansion of personal computing, which made CMMS solutions more affordable for medium-sized companies. Microsoft Access^® and Excel^®-based maintenance management became common. Although many companies still rely on these systems, there are more powerful options available today.

Into the 2000’s

Advancements in computing and information technologies into the 2000’s further impacted the way maintenance was performed and managed. CMMS systems could now be hosted on the cloud and accessed over the internet.

Low-cost, Software as a Service (SaaS) subscriptions and minimal IT requirements made cloud-based CMMS attractive to, and more affordable for, small businesses. Improved wireless and mobile technology made it possible for organizations to access their CMMS from internet-connected smart phones, tablets, and laptop computers.

The continued growth and application of internet technologies in recent years allows world-class organizations to implement advanced maintenance strategies such as condition-based maintenance (CbM) and predictive maintenance (PdM). With these strategies, internet-connected sensors are used to monitor asset conditions such as vibration, temperature, noise, and pressure, and predict when failure is about to occur. CMMS software continues to be improved to support these advanced maintenance strategies.

Keep Up with Changing Maintenance Practices with FTMaintenance

The history of maintenance evolved drastically over times and continues to change today. No matter what maintenance strategies you use, it is important to have a system in place to help you manage maintenance activities and provide value to your organization.

FTMaintenance is a feature-rich, easy-to-use platform that allows you to easily document, manage, and track maintenance activities. With a full suite of tools for managing work orders, assets, inventory, preventive maintenance, and more, FTMaintenance CMMS software will help you improve your current maintenance operations and prepare for the road ahead. Request a demo to see FTMaintenance in action!

Today’s maintenance teams rely on real data – supported by hands-on experience – to effectively manage their assets. Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) allows them to measure asset performance, evaluate maintenance strategies, and make smarter decisions about how assets are managed and maintained. In this article, we’ll cover three of the most commonly used asset management KPIs and explain how to interpret each one to continuously improve your asset management practices.

The Importance of Tracking Asset Management KPIs

Asset management KPIs provide insight into your equipment’s reliability, availability, and overall performance. Tracking these metrics over time helps you measure your progress towards broader organizational goals, such as reducing downtime, improving safety, and lowering maintenance costs. Understanding the variables in each KPI – and what the results mean – guides your attention to what’s working well and highlights areas that may need improvement.

Top 3 Asset Management KPIs

Every organization has its own strategic business goals, which means the asset management metrics they track – and even how those KPIs are defined – can vary. Some organizations may even develop their own metrics that better reflect their industry, regulatory environment, or internal processes.

That said, there are three core asset management KPIs widely used across industries: Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). These metrics provide a foundation for evaluating asset performance and identifying areas for improvement.

Mean Time to Repair

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is the average time it takes to restore an asset to working condition– from when the technician begins work until the asset is returned to normal operation. It is calculated by dividing the total time spent on corrective maintenance by the total number of repairs.

Repair time includes only the time spent performing the repair itself, also called “wrench time”. It does not include time spent waiting for access to the equipment, parts, technician availability, work approvals, or other maintenance processes. The calculation assumes that all necessary resources are available.

To be most useful, MTTR should be calculated per asset and per type of failure, since different failure types involved different levels of expertise, troubleshooting, time, and effort to resolve. Therefore, failures with vastly different repair times should not be grouped together when calculating MTTR.

MTTR Example

Over the course of six months, a motor had to be repaired 4 times due to a bearing failure. Technicians spent a total of 12 hours repairing the motor.

MTTR = 12 repair hours ÷ 4 repairs = 3 hours

On average, it takes 3 hours to repair the motor following a bearing failure.

How to Interpret Mean Time to Repair

MTTR helps maintenance teams evaluate how quickly they can resolve unplanned failures, and is used to predict how long a particular piece of equipment will be unavailable depending on the nature of the failure.

A low MTTR means that technicians can carry out repairs quickly. It typically reflects that technicians are knowledgeable and well-trained and that work instructions are clear. Low MTTR across similar failures also indicates that those tasks are relatively simple and do not take much time to complete.

For example, replacing a blown fuse might take just 10-15 minutes, while replacing a gearbox could take several hours. If you were to average both types of failures together, your MTTR would overestimate the time needed to replace a fuse, and greatly underestimate the time required for a gearbox replacement. That’s why it’s important to calculate MTTR by failure type.

A high MTTR can indicate that repairs are complex, equipment is difficult to maintain, or that technicians cannot complete the work in a timely manner. As assets age, they become more difficult to repair. Calculating MTTR can show how long certain repairs take compared to similar assets and help you build a business case for replacement.

Workforce and management issues may also lead to undesirable MTTR calculations. Technicians may lack the proper skills or training, or work instructions may be vague, requiring technicians to spend extra time interpreting what needs to be done. Calculating MTTR by labor resource – in addition to by asset and failure type – can help reveal whether issues lie with your workers or somewhere else.

In some cases, a consistently high MTTR may suggest a need for increased or adjusted preventive maintenance. If certain failures take significant time to repair, more frequent inspections or other targeted tasks could help reduce the likelihood or severity of those failures and lower MTTR over time.

Read Further: How to Measure Preventive Maintenance Effectiveness

While MTTR focuses on how quickly assets can be returned to service, it’s most meaningful when paired with metrics like Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). Tracking both helps maintenance teams understand whether they’re putting out fires or responding to rare, unavoidable issues.

Mean Time Between Failure

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is a measure of an asset’s reliability – specifically, how long equipment performs its intended function under normal operating conditions before a failure occurs. MTBF directly affects availability – the amount of time equipment is operable – and can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of maintenance strategies, track asset health, and set reasonable expectations for the timing of future failures.

MTBF is calculated by dividing the total operating time (the time equipment is functioning as intended) by the number of failures within a given time period.

In this context, operating time is the period of time when the asset is functioning as intended. It excludes time spent offline due to failures, scheduled maintenance, or planned downtime. Like MTTR, MTBF is most useful when calculated per asset and failure type, since different failures tend to occur at varying frequencies.

MTBF Example

Suppose the same motor from our earlier example ran for 2,000 hours in the six month period. The bearing failure occurred 4 times. Therefore:

MTBF = 2,000 hours ÷ 4 failures = 500 hours

This means the motor operates, on average, for 500 hours between bearing failures. However, keep in mind that this is just an estimate. A bearing failure may occur well-before or well-after the 500 hour mark. As you collect more data, this calculation will become more accurate and lead to more predictable maintenance needs.

How to Interpret Mean Time Between Failures

Tracking MTBF helps organizations monitor asset performance over time and make informed decisions about asset reliability.

A low MTBF value indicates frequent failures, and may suggest that equipment is nearing the end of its useful life, but that is not always the case. Frequent failures may also be caused by poor maintenance, incorrect operation, or ineffective preventive maintenance.

When MTBF is consistently low, maintenance teams should look at several potential factors before considering replacement:

• Preventive Maintenance Plans: Are the right tasks in place to prevent specific, frequent failure types?
• Maintenance Quality: Are technicians treating symptoms rather than performing proper troubleshooting? Are technicians rushing work? Is the asset a candidate for further root cause analysis?
• Operating Conditions: Is the asset being used according to manufacturer specifications? Are misuse or environmental factors reducing reliability?
• Training: Are operators and maintenance technicians properly trained? Are standard procedures being followed?

If equipment continues to fail despite addressing these areas, MTBF measurements provide objective data to support repair vs. replacement decisions.

A high MTBF value, on the other hand, means that equipment is operating reliably, well-maintained, and properly used, suggesting that your current maintenance strategy is working. However, it is important to regularly measure MTBF to check for early signs of wear and be aware of other potential issues before failures occur.

When used in conjunction with MTTR, MTBF paints a fuller picture of asset performance. MTBF tells you how often failures happen, while MTTR tells you how long those failures stop operations. Together, these asset performance metrics help assess both the frequency and impact of unplanned downtime.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) measures the productivity of an asset over a period of time. It is expressed as a percentage from 1% to 100%, with the higher the percentage indicating better performance.

This KPI is typically used in manufacturing environments that practice lean manufacturing. While the maintenance team may not be responsible for tracking this KPI, it is important to understand how maintenance activities contribute to reaching OEE targets.

This KPI is more complex than MTTR or MTBF, but it can be broken down into three simple components. To calculate OEE, multiply the equipment’s availability, performance, and quality together.

• Availability: how often equipment is ready when scheduled
• Performance: how fast equipment operates vs. its maximum speed
• Quality: how many units produced meet quality standards

For a deeper dive into OEE, read our article What is Overall Equipment Effectiveness?

OEE Example

A piece of production equipment has 87% availability, 95% performance, and 93% quality. Therefore:

OEE = 0.87 × 0.95 × 0.93 = 0.7686 = 76.86%

How to Interpret Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Overall Equipment Effectiveness helps manufacturers identify where inefficiencies might exist in their production process. It gives insight into whether your equipment is available when it should be, producing at its expected rate, and making quality parts. Maintenance activities often contribute to each of these factors.

Low availability means excessive unplanned downtime, which may be caused by poor reliability, slow repairs, or ineffective preventive maintenance. Tracking Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) can help you uncover what’s holding back repairs from being completed quickly. Similarly, tracking Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) can help determine why equipment is failing frequently.

Low performance means that machinery is running slower than expected, which may be due to wear and tear, improper calibration, or operator issues. Maintenance teams can help diagnose, analyze, and address many of these issues.

Low quality may stem from equipment running outside of specification, indicating a need for additional preventive maintenance inspections and adjustments.

The higher OEE, the better; however, keep in mind that there are limits to how high an OEE is realistically possible. LeanProduction.com offers the following OEE benchmarks:

• Perfect (100%): Perfect production – manufacturing only good parts, as fast as possible, with no stop time.
• World Class (85%): Considered world class for discrete manufacturers.
• Typical (60%): Typical for discrete manufacturers, but leaves room for improvement.
• Low (40%): Common for manufacturers just starting to track and improve production performance. Can be easily improved.

Tools for Tracking Asset Management KPIs

Tracking asset management metrics like MTTR, MTBF, and OEE requires access to reliable, accurate, and up-to-date maintenance data. Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software provides just that.

A CMMS tracks and stores key maintenance data such as wrench time, failure records, and service history, which form the basis of KPI calculations. With all of this information stored in one place, you can create dashboard visualizations and reports that help measure progress towards your goals over time.

Improve Asset Performance with FTMaintenance Select

FTMaintenance Select is a powerful asset management platform that captures and connects critical maintenance data to help you achieve your strategic goals. By centralizing asset information alongside service requests, inventory, work orders, and more, FTMaintenance Select enables you to effectively monitor asset health, reduce downtime, and improve performance. Request a demo today to see how FTMaintenance Select supports smarter, data-driven asset management.

Key Takeaways

• Proper work order management allows you to efficiently process and complete work orders
• The work order management process covers the entire work order lifecycle, from initial request to closure and analysis
• Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, like FTMaintenance, simplifies and automates work order management

Work order management is critical to maintaining asset reliability and minimizing downtime. However, managing work orders is more than tracking tasks – it’s a process that involves multiple interdependent steps that must be carefully coordinated. In this article, we break down the key stages of the work order management process and explain how maintenance software improves efficiency by automating routine tasks, tracking completion, and reducing manual work.

What is Work Order Management?

Work order management is the systematic approach of processing and completing maintenance work orders in a timely manner in order to minimize asset downtime. The process involves many steps and also depends on the availability of other maintenance resources such as assets, parts, people, and money. Once work orders are closed, they are analyzed to help improve work order schedules, work quality, and streamline the process.

Why is Work Order Management Important?

Traditionally, maintenance teams rely on paper-based systems to communicate job assignments. Though the work orders themselves may be easy to create by hand, manually managing them is labor-intensive and often introduces more problems than it solves.

For example, maintenance staff must interpret bad handwriting, leading to incorrect documentation. Physical copies are liable to get misplaced and lost, resulting in missed maintenance. Stacks of paper clutter up file cabinets and desks, making it difficult to find historical work orders.

Some maintenance teams have advanced to spreadsheet-based work order management, but these systems carry their own limitations. Spreadsheets can only be modified by one person at a time, making it difficult for technicians to see the most up-to-date information. Work orders generated by spreadsheet software must still be printed, bringing along the challenges discussed earlier. In addition, using spreadsheet software may be daunting for employees who prefer hands-on tasks over screen-based work.

As organizations grow, “old-school” work order management methods quickly become unsustainable and inefficient.  Even more so, a renewed focus on operational efficiency has put a spotlight on the functions of the maintenance department. To improve work order management, organizations invest in a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

Work Order Management Process

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Proper work order management accounts for every stage in a work order’s lifecycle, from initial request to completion. The following sections describe what happens in each step of a typical work order management process. Along the way, notice how a CMMS makes the work order management process more streamlined and efficient.

Work Request Approval

The need for maintenance work is often communicated through a work request or service request. An approver will review the request and determine whether a legitimate need exists, if enough information is available to create a work order, or if the issue has already been reported. Many organizations use the maintenance request feature of a CMMS to handle incoming requests. If the request is valid, it will be approved and a work order will be created.

Read also: What is a Maintenance Request System?

Work Order Creation

The creation of a work order signifies that authorization has been given to perform the requested work. Work orders are created from approved maintenance requests, by the maintenance staff, or automatically from a CMMS. Using a mobile CMMS, technicians can create work orders from the field.

Prioritization

Prioritizing work orders involves determining which work orders are to be completed first. A work order’s priority is typically determined by the criticality of the job or asset. For example, work orders related to safety (of sites or staff) may be given a high priority. Lower priority work orders include routine preventive maintenance or non-essential maintenance requests.

The maintenance team creates standards for what makes a work order high or low priority. Not only will this allow the truly high priority work orders to be completed faster, but when a backlog does occurs, it should consist of low-priority work.

Scheduling

The scheduling of work orders is based on their priority. Emergency work orders are addressed without delay. Preventive maintenance work orders are typically scheduled based on calendar- or runtime-based intervals, or by the asset manufacturer’s maintenance guidelines.

While timing plays a key role in work order scheduling, it’s not the only consideration. Maintenance managers must also account for the availability of technicians, spare parts and supplies, tools, and other special equipment needed to complete the job. CMMS software allows you to visualize the maintenance workload and identify how staff can be used most effectively.

Assignment

Every maintenance team is made up of technicians with varying skills and abilities. Work orders should be assigned to the technicians best suited for the job. For larger organizations, technicians may specialize in a particular craft or have training on specific assets.

Small to medium-sized businesses are more likely to use jacks-of-all-trades who can perform a multitude of maintenance tasks. Determining who is best for the job may be done by first-hand experience, but can also be identified using maintenance reports from a CMMS.

Distribution

Once work orders are scheduled and assigned, they must find their way into the hands of technicians. Work orders can be physically handed out, but it takes time to track down technicians. CMMS software features automatic printing to designated printers and automatic emailing to staff. A CMMS with mobile capabilities allows technicians to instantly receive work orders on internet-connected devices.

Execution

Execution is the act of the assigned technician(s) performing the tasks listed on the work order. A CMMS allows you to track the progress of work orders in real-time so that you can ensure technicians are staying on top of their work.

Documentation

An important aspect of work order management is ensuring that technicians accurately document all results—whether successful or not. The more accurate information you have, the better off you will be. Technicians should take care to record exactly what was done, how much time was spent, what parts were used, and so on. CMMS allows for easy documentation, which leads to more accurate maintenance records that can be used to identify areas of improvement and assist in future troubleshooting.

Poor documentation leads to inaccurate or flawed reports – as they say, “garbage in, garbage out.” Detailed work order documentation enables more accurate KPIs and insights from your CMMS reports.

Closure

Work order closure occurs when all tasks have been performed, all services delivered, and the job is complete. Technicians are now available to begin working on other “open” work orders.

Analysis

While the core of work order management focuses on day-to-day processing of work orders, organizations committed to continuous improvement should also track performance metrics to enhance their overall work order and maintenance management practices. Common work order management KPIs include:

• Maintenance Backlog: The number of hours it takes to complete pending work orders with your available resources
• On-Time Work Order Performance: The percentage of work orders completed by their due date
• Average Response Time: The amount of time it takes to start executing a work order after it has been created, most commonly used in organizations with a formal service request process

Tracking these KPIs brings better visibility to the efficiency of your work order management process, providing valuable insight into your performance and areas of improvement.

Aside from these KPIs, historical work orders also provide insight into asset health. Analyzing an asset’s service history helps identify recurring issues, failure patterns, and performance trends, revealing where adjustments to the maintenance strategy may be needed. These insights support more informed decisions about preventive maintenance frequency, repair versus replace strategies, and long-term asset planning.

Work Order Management Software

With so many steps involved in managing work orders, it’s no surprise that the process can quickly become overwhelming without the right tools. Work order management software, such as a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), automates tasks at each stage, helping you efficiently track maintenance work orders throughout their entire lifecycle.

Modern work order management software allows maintenance teams to:

• Receive service requests from non-maintenance personnel via a dedicated request portal
• Automatically create work orders based on preset schedules or on demand
• Prioritize work orders based on maintenance type, asset, customer, or nature of the work
• Assign tasks to the right labor resource based on skills or availability
• Schedule preventive maintenance at regular intervals
• Track progress in real time
• Document what work was completed, when, and by whom
• Analyze work order history to identify trends and recurring issues that impact equipment reliability
• Report on work order performance to find opportunities to continuously improve

By using work order management software, organizations gain greater visibility into their maintenance operations and improve the consistency, accuracy, and efficiency of their work order processes.

Improve Work Order Management with FTMaintenance Select

Even the most well-planned maintenance efforts can fall short without an efficient work order management system. FTMaintenance Select simplifies every stage of work order management to help your team stay organized, reduce manual tasks, and respond to maintenance needs faster. Request a demo today to see how FTMaintenance Select puts you in control over your work order process.

Effective asset management helps organizations maximize the value they get from physical assets. Although the discipline generally covers the entire asset lifecycle, in maintenance operations it focuses on maintaining equipment reliability, minimizing downtime, and controlling maintenance costs. In this article, we explore the asset management practices that maintenance teams use to improve availability and performance while supporting broader asset management goals.

What is Asset Management?

According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 55000, asset management is “coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from assets.” In practice, this means managing physical assets in a way that aligns with organizational goals, balances costs, mitigates risks, optimizes performance, and delivers great value throughout the asset’s lifecycle.

Put simply, asset management means working together – across departments and systems – to get the most value out of equipment, facilities, and other assets. Value includes not only financial return but also reliability, safety, compliance, and operational performance.

The Asset Life Cycle

Traditional asset management covers the entire asset lifecycle, from cradle to grave. While it can be defined in different ways, it typically consists of the following stages:

• Planning: Recognizing the need for an asset and defining its requirements
• Acquisition: Procuring, installing, setting up, testing, and inspecting the asset. This stage may also include activities such as tracking it in a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).
• Operation: Using the asset for its intended purpose
• Maintenance: Performed alongside operation to keep the asset running through routine maintenance and repairs
• Decommission/Disposal: discarding or repurposing the asset prior to its replacement

Many of these stages involve teams such as operations, engineering, procurement, and finance. However, maintenance plays a critical role during the operational phase by ensuring that assets continue to perform as expected.

From the perspective of the maintenance team, asset management focuses on preserving asset condition, reducing unplanned downtime, and supporting long-term performance through proactive and reactive maintenance strategies.

Download: Types of Maintenance Infographic

Asset Management vs. Maintenance Management

Though they are commonly used interchangeably, asset management and maintenance management refer to distinct but closely related functions.

Asset management is a broad discipline that focuses on maximizing the value an asset provides throughout its entire lifecycle. It includes activities like evaluating vendors, managing acquisition costs, preparing facilities for installation, training operators, and eventually reclaiming value through resale or disposal. The goal is to extract the greatest total value from each asset.

Maintenance management, on the other hand, deals specifically with coordinating the resources, schedules, and activities required to keep assets in working condition. It includes tasks such as managing spare parts, assigning labor, tracking work orders, and analyzing maintenance costs. While maintenance management supports the goals of asset management, it represents just one piece of the overall asset lifecycle strategy.

Key Elements of Asset Management in Maintenance Operations

Effective asset management within maintenance operations involves several elements that ensure assets are properly identified, tracked, maintained, and optimized. To better understand how maintenance teams manage assets, it helps to break down asset management into more specific categories:

Identification

Maintenance teams must know exactly what assets they are responsible for maintaining. While this may sound like common sense, it can be challenging in practice. A single organization might operate multiple facilities – whether in a single location or across the world – each containing hundreds to hundreds of thousands of assets including equipment and inventory.

Further, some assets function as one. For example, a production line is a single, integrated system composed of multiple assets working together. Each individual asset is made up of several subassemblies, which can be further broken down into individual parts.

Given this complexity, organizations must have a way to uniquely identify and track assets.

Asset Naming Conventions

Organizations use an asset naming convention to develop consistent, intuitive naming structures that uniquely identify assets and improve recognition, communication, and tracking. Clear naming makes it easier for technicians to locate asset records in asset tracking systems.

Asset Tags

After naming their assets, organizations often create physical labels – typically in the form of barcodes or QR codes – that encode identifying information. These asset tags can be scanned by asset tracking software to read or retrieve information about the asset.

Learn more about barcode systems and their role in maintenance management.

Asset Hierarchies

Asset hierarchies represent how your assets relate to one another using parent-child relationships. It allows maintenance teams to understand an asset’s role within the organization and visualize how assets work together.  For example, a facility may contain a production line (parent), which includes a conveyor (child), which in turn includes a motor (grandchild). Depending on the tools used to build them, asset hierarchies can be in the form of a nested list or visual tree structure, helping teams drill down from higher-level systems to individual components.

Bills of Materials

A bill of materials (BOM) is a structured list of parts – along with their respective quantities – used to maintain or repair an asset. It serves as a central point of reference for identifying which components the maintenance team can reasonably expect to repair or replace. BOMs also help organizations anticipate spare part demand, leading to more efficient procurement and inventory management.

Asset Tracking Software

Many organizations utilize asset management software, such as a CMMS, to track assets. These systems typically require a unique number that identifies the record, allowing users to easily identify, navigate to, and select assets.

Asset Location Tracking

It’s not enough to know what assets you have – you must also know where your assets are located. Organizations that manage mobile equipment (like vehicles), movable assets within facilities, or fixed assets across multiple sites need reliable ways to track asset locations.

In many cases, this is as simple as recording the asset’s physical location in a CMMS, spreadsheet, or paper log. For more advanced tracking, technologies like graphic information system (GIS) mapping and global positioning system (GPS) tracking help maintenance teams visualize asset locations and plan work with location in mind.

Monitoring Asset Condition

Understanding the condition of an asset is necessary for making decisions such as when to repair or retire equipment. Condition data can be collected in several ways. The most common method is inspection-based preventive maintenance, where technicians visually assess equipment on a regular schedule. More advanced strategies involve continuous condition monitoring using specialized equipment sensors or SCADA systems, which track metrics such as vibration, temperature, or pressure in real time.

Condition monitoring also enables advanced maintenance strategies such as condition-based maintenance (CbM) and predictive maintenance (PdM), which trigger maintenance when specific thresholds are met or forecasted. Additionally, maintenance teams may receive insight into asset health from maintenance requests submitted by machine operators, increasing visibility of emerging issues outside of routine monitoring.

Understanding Asset Design and Specifications

Understanding an asset’s design and specifications is essential for effective maintenance. An asset’s design influences its maintainability, or how easy or difficult it is to service. Knowing an asset’s design can affect how maintenance is planned or performed.

Specifications define the acceptable operating parameters for an asset – such as speed, temperature, or pressure – to help set performance expectations. For maintenance teams, this information is used to guide appropriate maintenance strategies, troubleshoot breakdowns, and ensure part compatibility so that the asset continues to operate within its intended range.

Specifications also help maintenance teams decide which replacement parts are compatible, which materials should be used, and what tolerances are acceptable during repair. When failures occur, comparing equipment’s actual performance to spec can help diagnose issues and be used to determine whether assets can be restored or need to be replaced.

Maintenance Planning and Execution

After documenting basic information about their assets, organizations can develop structured maintenance plans. These plans often include a mix of maintenance strategies tailored to each asset’s condition, criticality, usage, and risk of failure.

For example, corrective maintenance may be appropriate for non-critical assets that are inexpensive to repair or used infrequently. Preventive maintenance is used heavily on high-value or high-risk assets to minimize unplanned downtime. More advanced strategies may incorporate condition monitoring to trigger maintenance based on real-time performance data.

Often times, multiple maintenance strategies are applied to a single asset based on the many ways in which it can fail. Choosing the right combination ensures maximum reliability without unnecessary maintenance.

Cost Control

Asset management aims to maintain equipment at the lowest possible cost. However, as assets age, they require more frequent repairs and become increasingly costly to maintain. To keep costs under control, maintenance teams must strategically apply cost-effective maintenance strategies that extend asset life and reduce the total cost of ownership.

Maintenance costs are influenced not only by the chosen strategy, but also the specific tasks performed, the parts used, and the labor required. This demands careful coordination of inventory, workforce management, and when necessary, external service providers.

Over time, every asset reaches a point where maintenance becomes more costly than replacement. By analyzing maintenance data, maintenance managers can make informed decisions about whether to continue repairing equipment or invest in more efficient replacements.

Learn more about making repair vs. replace decisions.

Safety and Regulatory Compliance

In addition to improving performance, asset management also supports safety and regulatory compliance. Poorly maintained assets pose serious safety risks to operators and technicians, and may result in violations of workplace safety regulations or industry-specific standards. Proactive and consistent maintenance reduces the likelihood of accidents, injuries, and unexpected failures.

Asset management software also helps enforce compliance by documenting that specific tasks – such as safety inspections, calibration, or part replacements – have been completed on time, in full, and according to standards. These records can be provided during audits to demonstrate compliance and protect the organization from fines, penalties, and other liabilities

Many maintenance standards incorporate asset management best practices for improving performance, extending asset life, and reducing unplanned downtime. Following these guidelines ensures that compliance and safety become common practices within your maintenance operations.

Tracking Performance

To determine whether their asset management efforts are delivering results, maintenance teams must track asset management key performance indicators (KPIs) related to equipment health and reliability. Monitoring metrics such as Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) provide visibility into how well assets are performing and whether maintenance strategies are working.

CMMS platforms automatically capture the data used in these calculations and provide reports and dashboards that help you visualize your performance over time. These tools help teams identify problem areas, adjust maintenance plans, and continuously improve their asset management practices.

Manage Your Assets with FTMaintenance Select

Asset management is all about getting the most value from your equipment and assets. For maintenance teams, that means optimizing equipment performance while minimizing cost. Effectively managing assets across an entire organization is a big responsibility, but is made easier with the proper tools in place.

FTMaintenance Select is an asset management platform that allows maintenance teams to easily track, manage, and document maintenance performed on fixed assets, equipment, and facilities. With all asset data centralized in one platform, your team can plan more effectively, reduce downtime, and make smarter maintenance decisions. Request a demo today to see how FTMaintenance Select supports your asset management goals.

Key Takeaways

• MRO stands for maintenance, repair, and operations
• MRO is often overlooked, but can greatly impact an organization’s maintenance costs, inventory management, productivity, and procurement processes
• Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software helps industrial maintenance teams manage and track MRO activities

There are a number of daily activities and processes required to keep a business running smoothly. Facilities and equipment need proper upkeep. Workers need personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep them safe from hazards. Stockrooms must be adequately stocked with tools, cleaning supplies, and other materials. These activities (and others) are referred to as maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO).

Unfortunately, MRO activities are often seen as minor relative to other business processes such as production. However, the degree to which an organization manages and carries out MRO activities greatly benefits – or hampers – business operations. As the term suggests, the maintenance team plays a large role in performing MRO. This article provides an overview of MRO as it relates to maintenance management.

What is MRO?

MRO is an acronym that stands for maintenance, repair, and operations. Broadly speaking, MRO refers to any activities and processes needed to run a business such as asset maintenance, accounting, customer service, and even administrative tasks like responding to emails and reception duties.

In manufacturing environments, MRO is understood to describe the activities associated with the upkeep of the company’s assets. It includes physical maintenance performed on buildings (including any structures and grounds); electrical, lighting, HVAC, and plumbing systems; and equipment used in the production of finished goods or delivery of services.

Let’s further define what maintenance, repair, and operations means.

Maintenance refers to actions taken proactively to prevent an asset from breaking down. Proactive maintenance strategies include preventive maintenance (PM), condition-based maintenance (CbM), and predictive maintenance (PdM).

Repair refers to actions taken to restore a non- or under-performing asset to operational condition. This type of reactive maintenance activity is called corrective maintenance (CM).

Operations involve managing the day-to-day activities that help the business run efficiently. Maintenance operations include:

• Work order management
• Asset and equipment management
• Spare parts inventory management
• Preventive maintenance planning and scheduling
• Work request management

To make managing MRO activities more effective, organizations utilize computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. We discuss more about the benefits of using a CMMS for MRO later in this article.

Why is MRO Important?

MRO impacts an organization in four main areas.

Maintenance Costs

Asset failure is inevitable, but without adequate maintenance and repair, assets fail more frequently. Unplanned failures are more costly to resolve and lead to other losses due to production shutdowns, defective or damaged products, unproductive labor, missed business opportunities, and so on.

Poor maintenance also places undue stress on machinery, shortening their lifespan. As assets wear down, organizations must then decide whether to fully replace the asset or continue to repair it. Depending on the type of asset, new purchases can range from thousands to millions of dollars.

For repairs, the organization can either contract with third-party service providers or use their own personnel. Outsourced services increase maintenance costs by charging higher rates. If internal resources are used, the organization must purchase and stock the materials needed to perform maintenance work.

Inventory Control

Executing MRO activities requires the organization to purchase a variety of materials, supplies, and parts. However, it is common in small businesses that MRO purchases are carried out by maintenance staff that does not have strong skills in purchasing or procurement. Because of this, inventory management is often out of control.

For example, it is common for maintenance staff to over-order in fear of running out of stocked items. However, uncontrolled purchases lead to wasted money, cluttered stockrooms, and run the risk of stocking obsolete parts. Other times, disorganization makes it hard for employees to find parts, so orders are placed for parts that are already in stock but cannot be located.

Another situation that can present itself is when parts are not available when needed. Known as a stockout, this situation increases maintenance costs by extending asset downtime, thereby increasing total repair costs. To resolve the situation, organizations pay higher costs for expedited shipping or use risky stop-gap measures until parts arrive.

Learn more about MRO Inventory Management

Plant Productivity

Poor MRO management results in a number of hidden costs due to low productivity. Organizations that operate on reactive maintenance wait around for assets to fail – and when they do, it leads to excessive downtime that could have been reduced or avoided.

Without proper documentation of maintenance needs, maintenance teams tend to perform work that is unnecessary, unproductive, or counter-productive. Maintenance work on equipment that doesn’t need it leads to unnecessary downtime and production backlogs.

Stockouts prevent technicians from carrying out needed maintenance and repairs, leading to production stoppages. Instead, critical maintenance is deferred or operators are left idling until assets are returned to service.

Purchasing and Procurement

Organizations constantly purchase goods and services to support MRO efforts. Commonly, maintenance staff makes a high number of unplanned, low cost purchases that, when combined, make up a fair amount of the organization’s total expenditure. Proper MRO management reduces purchasing costs through volume discounts, vendor management, and other inventory optimization techniques.

Types of MRO

MRO can be divided into several subcategories including:

• Infrastructure repair and maintenance
• Production equipment repair and maintenance
• Material handling equipment maintenance
• Tooling and consumables

Infrastructure Repair and Maintenance

Infrastructure is the property owned by the organization, which includes the land and any buildings on it. Like other assets, infrastructure needs regular maintenance. MRO activities related to infrastructure include hard facility management services like building maintenance, responding to work requests, and capital improvements, as well as soft services like pest control, groundskeeping, and janitorial services.

Production Equipment Repair and Maintenance

This area of MRO is concerned with avoiding setbacks to production. Asset-intensive industries like manufacturing utilize a variety of equipment to produce finished goods and services. Over time, machine components wear down to the point where they stop working, causing failures and downtime. In some industries, production downtime costs thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per minute!

Manufacturing equipment requires different types of maintenance and repair depending on the makeup of their internal components and related systems. For example, moving mechanical parts need regular lubrication to prevent unwanted heat or vibration. Other components simply need to be replaced just before failure or shortly after they wear out. Electrical systems call for periodic calibration to verify their output.

Material Handling Equipment Maintenance

Material handling equipment includes equipment used to transport raw materials to production or packaged goods to warehouses or loading docks. Examples of material handling equipment include forklifts, conveyor systems, palletizers, and robotic arms. Though not directly involved in production, these assets are an important part of a smooth production process, and therefore need to be maintained.

Tools and Consumables

Tools and consumables are the items used to perform repairs on infrastructure, production assets, and material handling equipment. Tools include both power tools (i.e., drills, electric saws, and grinders), hand tools (i.e., hammers, screwdrivers, pliers), and their related bits. Unlike consumables, tools are durable and used over time.

Consumables are items that must be replaced regularly because they wear out or are used up. Consumable items include spare parts and supplies like adhesives, oils, and coolants. In addition, personal protective equipment (PPE), safety gear, and cleaning chemicals are also considered consumables.

Managing MRO with a CMMS

Industrial maintenance teams can leverage a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to manage MRO. A CMMS provides a single platform for managing maintenance operations and allows organizations to do the following:

• Improve maintenance tracking by keeping a record of all maintainable assets.
• Make maintenance work more effective by providing technicians with fully detailed work orders.
• Plan and schedule maintenance for equipment and facilities.
• Streamline inventory holdings by tracking the usage and movement of spare parts, tools, and consumables.
• Lower inventory purchasing costs by optimizing orders from low-cost vendors.
• Increase productivity by providing access to maintenance data through internet-connected mobile devices.
• Gain visibility of maintenance needs by implementing a work request system.
• Analyze asset performance to see which assets are costing the most money and why.
• Make better MRO management decisions by leveraging data from maintenance reports.

Improve Maintenance Operations with FTMaintenance

MRO is a crucial aspect of running a business, whether a small company or a large manufacturer. When left unmanaged, MRO processes pose significant risk to the organization. CMMS software like FTMaintenance improves MRO and MRO inventory management by automating maintenance operations, and providing a platform for documenting, managing, and tracking maintenance activities. Request a demo to learn how FTMaintenance can improve your maintenance operations.

What is a Bill of Materials?

In a maintenance context, a bill of materials (BOM) is a formal, structured list of parts and their respective quantities that make up a specific component or asset. It can be thought of as a recipe of sorts. A BOM acts as a centralized point of reference for determining the parts that comprise a piece of equipment.

Bills of materials vary in complexity depending on an organization’s level of asset management. At the most basic level is a pseudo-bill of materials, which lists critical spares and common replacement parts. The next level in complexity is a maintenance bill of materials, which includes all parts that the maintenance team is realistically expected to repair and/or replace during an asset’s lifetime. Asset-intensive organizations or organizations with robust asset management requirements may use an equipment bill of materials (EBOM), which lists every part and material that makes up an asset.

Importance of a Bill of Materials

Imagine cooking a meal without a recipe. You will need to travel to the fridge, cabinet, or pantry every time an ingredient is needed. Worse yet, you may not have the items you need on hand, causing you to go without, find a substitution, or make a trip to the grocery store.

The scenario above is analogous to performing maintenance. Bills of materials support high-quality, efficient asset maintenance. Identifying the parts required to maintain assets before maintenance begins helps organizations determine whether they have what they need to execute maintenance work. In addition, BOMs support MRO inventory management activities by ensuring the correct parts (and quantities) are available.

Organizations that do not use bills of materials are prone to unnecessary downtime, incorrect inventory purchases, incorrect part assignment on work orders, and other costly mistakes.

What Should be Included on a Bill of Materials?

The information included on a BOM is specific to an organization’s maintenance process. In general, a bill of materials includes the following information:

• Part name
• Part number
• Description of the part
• Quantity
• Unit price
• Vendor name
• Vendor part number

Bill of Materials Example

Below is a representation of a multi-level BOM. It shows the relationship between an asset, its related subassemblies, and parts/components in a parent-child hierarchical view.

Depending on the system used, a bill of materials may be presented in a single-level or nested list in a tabular format (i.e., arranged in a table with rows and columns).

Who Uses a Bill of Materials?

A bill of materials has many end users. Maintenance planners use a BOM to help determine what parts to buy or what parts may be needed in the future. BOMs help stockroom employees know which parts belong to a particular asset. Maintenance technicians utilize a BOM to identify the parts to retrieve from a stockroom, or if parts are unavailable, who to call to order replacements. Because many different stakeholders will use the bill of materials, it is important to keep it up to date and periodically review it to ensure its accuracy.

Benefits of a Bill of Materials

The benefits of using a bill of materials for maintenance are widespread. In general, it helps you better visualize how your assets and parts are related. Below are some benefits a BOM provides:

• Reduced downtime: Technicians can refer to the BOM to quickly identify parts needed to complete repairs.
• Simplified procurement and purchasing: Less research is required to identify what parts need to be reordered. Part numbers are readily available when creating requisitions and purchase orders.
• Optimized maintenance scheduling: A BOM ensures that all of the correct parts are available for upcoming maintenance work.
• Fewer incorrect inventory purchases: Since there is less opportunity for guesswork, fewer mistakes are made when reordering parts.
• Streamlined inventory holdings: If not being used elsewhere, parts belonging to decommissioned assets can be removed from the stockroom, reducing the carrying cost of storing unneeded spare parts.

Bill of Materials Software

For maintenance teams, BOM creation and management is best done in computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. A CMMS automatically generates a bill of materials based on the parts used on work orders. Because the CMMS stores asset and MRO inventory in a single database, users can access robust part information in just a few clicks. When it comes time to reorder parts, inventory staff can view purchasing and vendor information from right within the software.

Effectively Manage Bills of Materials with FTMaintenance CMMS

Bills of materials help organizations build relationships between assets and their related parts, providing many benefits for managing maintenance operations. FTMaintenance Select provides a single platform for managing spare part inventories, including the ability to create asset-specific parts lists. Request a demo today to learn more about FTMaintenance Select CMMS software.

In modern maintenance environments, nothing happens without a plan. Behind every inspection, repair, or replacement lies formal documentation of what’s to be done. More than just a piece of paper, maintenance work orders are the starting point for effective maintenance. In this article, we’ll explore what a maintenance work order is and why it is critical to successful maintenance operations.

What is a Maintenance Work Order?

A maintenance work order is a formal document that describes a maintenance task and authorizes the maintenance team to perform the work. Sometimes referred to as “jobs,” maintenance work orders outline activities such as routine inspections, part replacement, and repairs. Typically, they specify what work is required, who is responsible, when it’s due, and how to complete it.

A maintenance work order is a “living” document that serves many purposes throughout its lifecycle:

• At creation, it provides a clear description of the work to be performed.
• During execution, it tracks progress and notes any changes or issues.
• At completion, it summarizes the work that was done and verifies that it was performed as intended.
• During analysis, it becomes a historical record that provides insights into recurring maintenance issues, team productivity, and asset performance.

Types of Work Orders

There are multiple types of maintenance work orders. Depending on the organization, they generally fall into one of the following categories:

• Corrective Maintenance (CM): Issued to restore assets to optimal or operational condition after a failure or issue is identified.
• Preventive Maintenance (PM): Scheduled in advance for time-based or usage-based tasks such as inspections, cleaning, or part replacements.
• Condition-based Maintenance (CbM): Generated in response to real-time equipment data from condition-monitoring sensors, triggered when performance falls outside of acceptable thresholds.
• Predictive Maintenance (PdM): Triggered proactively based on asset service history, real-time condition data, and predictive analysis to anticipate failures before they occur.

Who Creates Maintenance Work Orders?

While most work orders originate from within the maintenance team, they can be created by a variety of people, depending on your organization’s structure and type of maintenance being performed. Below are some common sources of maintenance work orders:

Requesters

Non-maintenance personnel – such as employees, operators, customers, or tenants – may report issues through a maintenance request system. These requests are typically reviewed and converted into work orders by the maintenance team.

Maintenance Managers

Maintenance managers, or other employees in a maintenance planning role, often create work orders to schedule planned maintenance or respond to reported issues.

Maintenance Technicians

Technicians may create work orders in response to problems noticed during preventive maintenance inspections or other tasks. It’s also common for technicians to create work orders after the fact, especially when responding to breakdowns or emergencies.

Department Leaders

Leaders of departments that depend on the maintenance team, such as production, facility management, and operations, may submit requests or create work orders directly, depending on their access to the work order management system.

Work Order Software

Work order software, like a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), can automatically generate work orders for recurring tasks using time-based or usage-based triggers. In more advanced organizations, CMMS software may be integrated with sensors or control systems that trigger work orders based on real-time equipment data. In addition, mobile CMMS software allows technicians to create work orders from the field or job site.

Learn more: What is a CMMS?

Lifecycle of a Maintenance Work Order

A maintenance work order goes through multiple stages throughout its lifecycle:

1. Inception: Maintenance work is identified through a maintenance request or a work order template for planned maintenance.
2. Creation: A maintenance work order is generated, containing details about the task. The work order is prioritized, scheduled, and assigned according to an organization’s work order management process.
3. Performance: Technicians perform the tasks per the work order and document the resources used to complete it.
4. Closure: Following completion of the work, the maintenance work order is filed away and becomes a permanent record of what was done and what resources were used.
5. Analysis: Closed work orders are used to troubleshoot asset breakdowns, reviewed to identify failure trends, patterns, and track work order management KPIs.

While this lifecycle represents a typical work order process, each organization may manage their work orders differently based on their tools, procedures, and goals. To visualize this process, download our Work Order Management Process infographic.

What to Include in a Maintenance Work Order

The information included on a maintenance work order depends on your organization’s needs. Below are the most common fields included on a maintenance work order during its creation. Remember, technicians may add additional details and documentation as they carry out their work.

• Work Order Number: A unique identifier used to track the work order.
• Requester Information: The name and contact details of the requester, tenant, or customer.
• Asset Information: The name and ID of the asset or equipment requiring maintenance.
• Location: The physical location of the asset or place where maintenance will be performed.
• Problem Description: A clear description of the scope of work to be completed.
• Instructions: The specific tasks or procedures the technician must follow, most commonly used for preventive maintenance activities.
• Parts and Materials: A list of parts, supplies, and materials, along with their quantities.
• Tools Required: Any special tools or equipment needed to complete the job.
• Assignee: The technician or team responsible for completing the work.
• Time Estimate: How long the work order is expected to take.
• Deadline or Schedule: The desired or required completion date.
• Cost Estimate: An estimate of the labor, parts, tools, and other costs. For service providers, this may reflect the cost billed to the customer.
• Attachments: Supplemental information such as images, videos, or other maintenance documentation.

The fields here are focused on the work itself, and do not include other information such as priority, labor craft, maintenance type, or risk level. While optional, including this additional context helps determine who is qualified to perform the work, how urgent the task is, and what resources may be needed.

How to Manage Maintenance Work Orders

Many organizations use manual, paper-based or spreadsheet-based methods for managing maintenance work orders. While these systems are familiar “tools of the trade” to many teams, they lack the interconnectivity and automation of modern work order software.

Work order management is a core function of computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. A CMMS helps organizations create, manage, track, and analyze maintenance work orders. The main advantage of a CMMS over other systems is that it connects maintenance work orders with other key maintenance data within a single system. This integration provides greater visibility into maintenance operations, making work order management more efficient while supporting better decision-making across the maintenance process.

To learn more about how a CMMS supports work order management, read our article What is Work Order Management?

Track Maintenance Work Orders with FTMaintenance Select

Maintenance work orders are crucial to successful maintenance operations, as they help track work from start to completion. FTMaintenance Select CMMS is work order software that helps organizations generate, manage, and track work orders within a centralized system.

Whether you’re scheduling preventive maintenance or responding to urgent repairs, FTMaintenance Select gives you the tools to stay organized and in control of your work order management process. Request a demo of FTMaintenance Select to discover how digitized work orders can transform your maintenance operations.