Author: Ethan Wilke

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

Click to download

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 and materials 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; equipment used in the production of finished goods or delivery of services; and tools and parts used to perform maintenance work.

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, equipment management, spare parts inventory management, preventive maintenance planning and scheduling, and 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, inventory control, plant productivity, and purchasing and procurement.

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. Learn how to make these decisions by reading our article, Making Repair vs. Replace Decisions with a CMMS.

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 do 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 Activities and Materials

Depending on the context, MRO can refer to a wide range of activities or materials that keep facilities and equipment running efficiently. MRO is commonly divided into several subcategories:

• Infrastructure repair and maintenance
• Production equipment repair and maintenance
• Material handling equipment maintenance
• Tools and consumable items

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, grounds keeping, and janitorial services.

Learn more about building maintenance.

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 Consumable Items

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.

What is Accountability in Maintenance Management?

When you hear the word accountability, what do you feel? Fear? Stress? Usually when we hear this word, it’s in reaction to a negative situation – something went wrong and someone will be blamed for the event. You might say that a person must be held accountable for his/her actions, suggesting that there should be some punishment. Due to this association, moving towards a culture of accountability can be challenging.

With that said, it is important to remember that “accountability” is not the same as “blame.” Accountability is being responsible for one’s own actions and the results of those actions, both good and bad. For maintenance managers, the goal of creating a culture of accountability is to improve maintenance processes, not to assign blame. Accountability is a forward-thinking strategy. Your team is made up of problem solvers. Every failure is an opportunity to learn from what went wrong and what could be done to improve the situation or to prevent it from happening in the future.

Creating a Culture of Accountability

Accountability starts with communication. Maintenance managers must help technicians understand what is expected of them, to what standard work will be held, and what deadlines must be met. They also have an obligation to monitor the processes put in place and ensure that procedures are being followed. Being able to express concerns and accept feedback also plays an important role in strengthening communication and maintaining accountability.

The idea of accountability sounds really good on paper, but how does it play out on the plant floor? After all, there’s only one of you – you can’t watch what every person is doing every minute of every day. How can you ensure that your staff members are personally invested in developing and maintaining a culture of accountability? How can you make sure that maintenance is being performed correctly? How can you make sure that employees are staying productive? How will technicians know the specifications for each asset?

One thing you can do is provide tools, like computerized maintenance management software (CMMS), for you and your staff that documents, tracks, and communicates your maintenance process along with detailed feedback on the maintenance performance of your staff.

How a CMMS Improves Accountability

Without a system in place for communicating maintenance requirements and performance expectations, it is difficult for anyone to be accountable for their work. There is no record that can be referenced when there are miscommunications and misunderstandings about a particular job or task. A CMMS helps foster communication by documenting and storing information about your maintenance assets. The following are a few ways in which a CMMS can help improve accountability.

Work Order Tracking

A CMMS helps you create detail-rich work orders and provides you with full visibility of work being done. Using work order software to generate work orders makes it easy to communicate necessary details such as who is responsible for the work, what materials are needed to complete the job, and when the work must be completed. You can also use the CMMS to quickly check the status of work orders and follow up on any tasks that are incomplete or overdue. The work order itself then becomes the reference point for both maintenance manager and technician to discuss.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance (PM) procedures must be closely followed in order to keep equipment functioning. Because the consequences that may occur from skipped or missed preventive maintenance can be quite serious, it is important that all team members are held accountable for their timely and accurate completion. Preventive maintenance software, like CMMS, can be just the tool you need to keep your team accountable.

Scheduling PMs for a handful of assets may not be much of a problem, but most companies maintain hundreds – if not thousands – of pieces of equipment. Without CMMS, keeping track of these schedules is nearly impossible. Automated work order generation, distribution, and notification ensure that preventive maintenance assignments are not missed or forgotten.

CMMS also helps you standardize PM activities through the use of tasks. Detailed tasks lists communicate your expectations for the work while also serving the purpose of providing step-by-step instructions for technicians to follow. In general, task lists will spell out what must be done, how it should be done, what guidelines or specifications must be met, and approximately how long a task should take. Because they follow the same procedure each and every time, it becomes easy to tell when PMs fall below expectations and where additional training might be needed. This performance evaluation data is most clearly revealed in reports, which are discussed later.

Notifications

Notifications automate communication about the status of your maintenance activities, helping to ensure that work is not forgotten, lost, or miscommunicated. When a maintenance request or work order is created in CMMS software, notifications can be sent to the right people, letting them know that a new job is waiting.

A CMMS can also be used to implement an approval process for work order closure. As part of this process, notifications can inform a superior that a work order is ready for approval or let someone else know that approval has been given. Securing the approval of others helps facilitate a system of checks and balances that ensures maintenance work is meeting expectations.

Mobility

A mobile CMMS empowers your staff to use maintenance software from the field. With more access to your maintenance management software, technicians are more likely to report issues on the spot, track tasks and time as they go, and stay productive. CMMS software that includes GPS or GIS functionality can also help you keep track of where employees and assets are located.

Reports and Dashboards

Maintenance reports and dashboards are vital tools for holding your team accountable for its performance. Maintenance management reports help you track productivity, work completion rates, maintenance costs, and more. Dashboards graphically display key performance indicators (KPIs), allowing you to monitor operations at a glance. Analyzing the metrics provided by a CMMS helps you identify areas of improvement, which can be reviewed with your team.

Improve Accountability at Your Facility

Accountability should not be considered a bad word. It is a shared responsibility between team members that can foster more collaboration and accuracy, thereby improving maintenance operations and morale. But creating a culture of accountability requires the right tools. FTMaintenance provides a single platform for managing, documenting, and tracking maintenance activities. Request a demo of FTMaintenance to discover how our maintenance management software can help improve accountability.

Even if you don’t call it by this name, you may already be familiar with the concept of corrective maintenance in your daily life. If the dryer breaks, you fix or replace it. If windows are dirty, you clean them. If the color of your siding is fading, you paint it.

When this concept is applied to the industrial workplace, there’s a little more to it. Machine breakdowns require investigation to identify the issue and make a decision as to whether a part should be repaired or replaced. Components are cleaned so that assets can perform at their highest capacity. General upkeep is done to keep environments safe and secure.

You know that preventive maintenance is used to prevent breakdowns before they happen, so where does corrective maintenance fit into the big picture?

Read Blog Post: What is Preventive Maintenance?

Corrective Maintenance Definition

Corrective maintenance (CM) is a maintenance task performed to restore a non- or under-performing asset to an optimum or operational condition. This corrective maintenance definition may mean different things, depending on your organization or industry.

For example, corrective maintenance in equipment-centric businesses may be the repair or replacement of a part that has worn down. Companies that deal primarily with non-equipment assets, such as facilities or property, might consider mowing the lawn to be CM.

The need for corrective action may be discovered in many ways. A maintenance technician may notice a degrading part while performing a preventive maintenance job like an inspection. A machine operator may alert the maintenance team that equipment is not functioning as expected. Seasonal weather may dictate the need for corrective maintenance, such as when a parking lot must be plowed after a snow storm.

Types of Corrective Maintenance

CM can be broken down into smaller categories: scheduled and unscheduled.

• Scheduled corrective maintenance: Maintenance that is needed, but not required to be performed immediately.
• Unscheduled corrective maintenance: Maintenance that is required due to a critical failure that must be corrected without delay.

Corrective Maintenance Examples

The following examples are based on the types of corrective maintenance listed above:

• A spray nozzle becomes clogged causing lubricant to stop flowing through the nozzle. A work order is created to clear the blockage or replace the nozzle head at the time of the next inspection (scheduled corrective maintenance).
• Mineral build-up from hard water collects in a pipe, increasing the pressure and causing it to burst. The pipe must be replaced as soon as possible (unscheduled corrective maintenance).

Advantages of Corrective Maintenance

When used as part of a larger maintenance strategy, corrective maintenance can provide multiple benefits.

• Less Planning Required: Although some corrective maintenance activities must still be planned, compared to preventive maintenance schedules, there is less planning involved.
• Simplified Process: CM is need-based, allowing the maintenance team to focus on other tasks, such as preventive maintenance, until a breakdown or adverse condition occurs.
• More Appropriate in Some Cases: Corrective maintenance can save money because you don’t need to repair or replace an asset until maintenance is truly needed. For example, it is more cost-effective to replace a light bulb when it burns out than to spend time, money, and effort creating a preventive maintenance plan.

Disadvantages of Corrective Maintenance

Relying solely on CM without the benefit of a preventive maintenance strategy can have significant shortcomings.

• Increased Downtime: When serious problems arise, maintenance can be a slow and expensive process. Periods of equipment downtime affect production, costing the organization money.
• Higher Maintenance Costs: Without preventive maintenance, the condition of assets can deteriorate more significantly before problems are discovered, requiring the repair or replacement of more parts while also increasing labor costs.
• Safety Issues: When performed in response to a breakdown where money is being lost every second, maintenance may be rushed, leading to a higher risk of unsafe or improper work.
• Unpredictability: When emergencies happen, all other maintenance work is put on hold until the problem is resolved, leading to a backlog of work orders. Maintenance managers must also quickly identify the technicians and parts needed to address the repair.

When to Use Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance is unavoidable. Every maintenance team performs some form of maintenance in response to equipment breakdowns and failures. But as we’ve stated, relying too heavily on CM can negatively impact operations. So when should you use corrective maintenance over other types of maintenance, such as preventive maintenance?

The decision can depend on many things, such as the cost of downtime, your assets’ reliability, and whether assets can be easily swapped if problems occur. Your company may also conduct a cost-benefits analysis on your assets to help support the case for scheduled corrective maintenance. Experts recommend that your balance of corrective vs. preventive maintenance should be 80/20. That is, 80% of maintenance should be preventive, while the remaining 20% should be corrective maintenance.

How CMMS Software Helps

The goal of every maintenance team is to reduce asset downtime. A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) like FTMaintenance stores information about corrective maintenance activities and automatically builds a maintenance history. During critical corrective maintenance tasks, it also allows technicians to quickly check an asset’s service history, speeding up troubleshooting and repairs. Corrective maintenance data can be analyzed to identify trends, spawning future preventive maintenance that will help avert future failure. Learn more about all the CMMS features FTMaintenance has to offer.

What is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance (PM), sometimes called preventative maintenance, is maintenance that is proactively performed on an asset with the goal of lessening the likelihood of failure, reducing unexpected downtime, and prolonging its useful life.

In practice, this means regularly checking equipment for small problems and fixing them before failure can occur. Preventive maintenance activities may consist of inspections, calibrations, lubrications, adjustments, cleaning, or part replacements. As preventive maintenance activities are performed, workers also document an asset’s condition so they know when future maintenance may be needed.

Why Is PM Important?

Imagine what would happen if you waited until your car’s engine failed before you got an oil change. Each time this occurs, you would have to pay for an emergency tow truck to take it to a repair shop where the engine can be fixed. That’s if there is no catastrophic damage. Otherwise, you must source a rebuilt engine (usually thousands of dollars) and install it. Meanwhile, you must also find an alternate mode of transportation.

Clearly, waiting for your engine to fail is not only inconvenient, but also costly in terms of money and time. It would be much easier to try to prevent the breakdown before it happens. This same logic applies to the equipment and assets you work with every day.

Types of Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance can take many forms. The two most common are:

• Calendar-based preventive maintenance: Maintenance activities are scheduled based on a specific date, or a time interval such as number of days.
• Runtime-based preventive maintenance: Maintenance activities are scheduled based on a specific measured runtime unit, such as miles, hours, or level.

Based on our definition above, the following may also be categorized as types of preventive maintenance:

• Condition-based maintenance (CbM): Maintenance is scheduled when a monitored condition characteristic of an asset’s normal operation, such as temperature, vibration, pressure, meter readings, etc., is out of its normal measured range.
• Predictive maintenance (PdM): Maintenance is scheduled by analyzing real-time equipment data and data from previous breakdowns.

Preventive Maintenance Examples

The following are examples of preventive maintenance examples, based on the types defined earlier in this article.

• A work order for cleaning the gutters is created every 6 months (calendar-based).
• An oil change work order is assigned to a technician after every 5,000 miles traveled by a fleet vehicle (runtime-based).
• An equipment sensor shows that a shaft is vibrating beyond normal limits. A work order is created with instructions to inspect, and potentially replace, the bearings (condition-based maintenance).
• After analyzing real-time and historical maintenance data, an analyst concludes that a machine will likely fail after running for 1,000 hours. A work order is created to inspect a subassembly after 950 more hours of runtime (predictive maintenance).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance

Advantages

There are a number of advantages of preventive maintenance compared to other types of maintenance, such as corrective maintenance (CM).

• Better Preparation for Maintenance Work: Since maintenance activities can be planned ahead of time, you can efficiently coordinate any required parts, supplies, and labor resources before work is due.
• Improved Scheduling: PM activities can be scheduled to fit into the production schedule or during planned plant shutdowns.
• Lower Overall Maintenance Costs: Unplanned maintenance is often more expensive due to excessive downtime, loss of production, and expedited shipping fees. The cost of preventive maintenance activities is more controlled. In fact, companies typically save 12-18% on total maintenance costs using preventive maintenance.

Disadvantages

Preventive maintenance is an important part of every maintenance strategy. However, preventive maintenance does have some limitations.

• More Time Needed to Plan: Designing a PM plan takes time, effort, and ability. This project requires dedicated resources, which may not always be readily available.
• Increased Costs from Excessive Maintenance: Performing maintenance on equipment that doesn’t need it leads to unnecessary downtime, labor costs, and part usage. Additionally, incorrect re-assembly, misalignment, or other errors caused by nonessential interactions can actually reduce the reliability of your assets.
• More Maintenance Resources are Required: Preventive maintenance requires additional workers, parts, and budget to implement correctly. However, the long-term benefits you will receive will far outweigh this requirement.

When to Use Preventive Maintenance

Even with all its benefits, it may not always be clear when to use preventive maintenance. Ideally, you’ll want to use it to extend the lifespan of all your assets, but if you’re just getting started, you need to prioritize.

At a minimum, preventive maintenance should be applied to assets that are critical to production, where their ability to perform their job is of high importance. From there, you can expand your plan to include non-critical equipment and facilities.

Using a PM program can also better organize the activities of the maintenance department. Carefully thinking through your maintenance operations helps you better forecast the demand for maintenance resources and make it easier to balance the work load. The creation of standardized PM task lists will ensure that all employees are performing work in the same way. Also, using a preventive maintenance plan as a guide keeps the team on task and makes sure that maintenance is being done when it’s needed.

How Preventive Maintenance Software Helps

Preventive maintenance simplifies and standardizes complex maintenance processes. However, because PMs will likely be performed on a large number of assets, it is nearly impossible to effectively track everything manually. Preventive maintenance software, like FTMaintenance computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, stores all of your maintenance data in one place so you can easily keep track of all your PM activities.

Every industrial organization relies on well-maintained assets to keep their business going. Maintenance management is an important, yet seldom discussed, aspect of managing a company. People unfamiliar with working in industrial environments may not understand what is meant by maintenance management. In this article, we explore many common questions surrounding maintenance management.

What is Maintenance Management?

Maintenance management is an orderly process to control the maintenance resources and activities required to preserve assets at, or repair them to, an acceptable working order. While you may interpret this definition of maintenance management as simply meaning “fixing things,” that would be an oversimplification. There is a lot more to maintenance management than most people realize. Since much of an organization’s money is tied up in equipment and facilities, important decisions are made regarding time, people, and money.

Why is Maintenance Management Important?

Maintenance directly impacts the long-term success of an organization. Assets that are poorly maintained experience frequent, unexpected downtime, and cause a ripple effect. Instability, inconsistent product quality, stopped production, and high operational costs jeopardize an organization’s profitability and longevity.

When done properly, maintenance management keeps assets in optimum operating condition. Less disruption in production or service leads to efficient operations, increases quality, and improves productivity. In addition, maintenance management lowers operational costs, protects the organization from liability, and improves environmental and personal safety.

Further Reading: 5 Reasons Maintenance Management is Important

Objectives of Maintenance Management

All forms of maintenance management share similar objectives no matter the industry, plant, or product or service offered. The following are some objectives of maintenance management:

• Minimizing asset failure and downtime
• Extending asset life
• Planning maintenance work
• Cost control and budgeting
• Improving product quality
• Developing improved policies, procedures, and standards
• Complying with regulations
• Ensuring safety of personnel

As you can see, each of these objectives is closely tied to one another, and is crucial to the success of the organization. We cover the maintenance management objectives listed above in more detail in our article, 8 Maintenance Management Objectives.

Components of Maintenance Management

Maintenance management is made up of many key functions. Each of these functions must be managed in and of itself to improve the maintenance process. Listed below are the components of maintenance management.

Work Order Management

Work orders are the primary channel of communication for maintenance work. Work order management is the system that defines how work orders are processed and completed. It boils down to how the maintenance department makes sure that work gets done accurately and on time. This includes rule setting for work order creation, prioritization, scheduling, assignment, distribution, execution, documentation, and closure.

Read more about the work order management process.

Asset Management

Asset Lifecycle Process

In an industrial setting, asset management seeks to maximize the value of fixed assets throughout their lifecycle. Maintenance is only one aspect of asset management, which also includes planning, acquisition, operation, and decommissioning.

For its part, maintenance management helps extend an asset’s useable life by coordinating the resources needed to keep it in operating condition. This includes monitoring an asset’s condition, knowing its performance specifications, applying effective maintenance strategies, and tracking maintenance costs. Based on these factors, an organization can determine whether it’s better to repair or replace the asset.

Facility Management

Like asset management, facility management encompasses a range of functions and activities, of which maintenance management is a part. Facility management coordinates physical workplaces, people, and support services to support business goals. This includes hard facilities management services relating to the physical structure of the building, and soft facilities management services related to people.

Maintenance management contributes in a number of ways. During everyday operations, maintenance resolves unexpected issues. Regular inspections of a building’s HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and other systems help identify longer-term maintenance needs. Additionally, maintenance management functions keep the organization up-to-date on environmental and health and safety regulations.

Read More about Facility Management: What is Facility Management?

MRO Inventory Management

Another component of maintenance management is the management of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) inventory. This type of inventory includes items such as chemicals and cleaners, tools, safety equipment, personal protective equipment, and other consumables. Managing MRO inventory involves procuring, storing, using, and replenishing stock at a low cost. The main functions of MRO inventory management are:

• Identification: Identifying what MRO items the organization uses and their specifications.
• Location: Creating an organized system that allows team members to find items quickly
• Procurement: Acquiring MRO items needed for maintenance work.
• Inventory Control: Ensuring the right stock is available at the right place at the right time.

Explore these concepts in detail in our article, What is MRO Inventory Management?

Maintenance Planning and Scheduling

Maintenance planning and scheduling is the cornerstones of effective maintenance management. It involves prioritizing maintenance work and organizing it so that it is completed efficiently.

Planning activities consider everything that will be needed for maintenance work to be performed, including: what tasks need to be done, how tasks will be performed, what parts will be needed, and who will do the work. Those involved in maintenance management must coordinate employee schedules and part availability with ever-changing maintenance priorities and asset availability.

Scheduling determines when jobs are performed. Some maintenance work is urgent and performed immediately, while other jobs are scheduled to be completed in the near future. Regularly occurring maintenance work, such as inspections and condition monitoring, is scheduled in advance at weekly, monthly, or even yearly intervals. Therefore, it makes sense that scheduled maintenance is planned in advance.

While it is not necessary for maintenance to be planned and scheduled, many organizations desire to move towards a proactive, rather than reactive, maintenance culture. In another section, we will describe the differences between proactive and reactive maintenance.

Maintenance Request Management

While much of an organization’s maintenance needs are handled within the maintenance department, other departments and employees may request maintenance assistance. Requests that come from outside the maintenance department must be reviewed and evaluated for their legitimacy. Valid, approved requests move on to become work orders.

In addition to receiving, reviewing, and accepting, maintenance request management includes communicating with requesters. Requesters expect to be informed about the status of their request, such as whether the requests have been approved, when work will take place, and whether the requested work has been completed.

Further Reading: What is a Maintenance Request System?

Reporting

As with all types of management, reporting plays an important role. Maintenance management reports inform the organization of different aspects of maintenance operations. Reports are used to collect key data about the maintenance department, track key performance indicators (KPIs), identify areas of improvement, and set goals. Reports also help the organization develop forecasts, guide budget planning, and make better decisions.

Maintenance Management Strategies

There is no one correct way to manage maintenance. Different types of maintenance management are used depending on factors such as the nature of the imminent or present failure, availability of parts and personnel, and budget.

Maintenance management generally employs one of two strategies: reactive maintenance and proactive maintenance. Both are acceptable maintenance processes and are often used in combination with one another. Yet, each involves a different amount of time and money. Organizations must be able to decide which methods to use and when.

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

Reactive Maintenance Management

Some organizations choose a reactive maintenance management strategy, sometimes referred to in the industry as the firefighting method. With this strategy, maintenance teams wait until assets break before they take action to fix them.

As the term “firefighting” suggests, the circumstances surrounding this type of maintenance management are chaotic. Maintenance teams do not know when the next breakdown will happen, but spring into action once one occurs. Though this can place a burden on maintenance teams, especially when there are multiple “fires” to put out at once, it is a common way repairs are carried out.

The type of maintenance most associated with a reactive strategy is corrective maintenance (CM). Corrective maintenance tasks restore non- or under-performing assets to operational condition. They are typically performed in response to a critical failure or breakdown, though maintenance can be planned for less severe problems.

Proactive Maintenance Management

While some organizations take a “fix it when it breaks,” approach, others take a more proactive approach. They look to prevent failure by looking for signs of wear and tear before a problem occurs.

Proactive maintenance is performed in a number of ways. Assets are regularly inspected for signs of damage. Preventive measures, such as calibration, cleaning, and lubrication ensure assets function as expected. Pre-emptive part replacement reduces the chance of downtime caused by worn components.

Compared to reactive maintenance management, proactive maintenance requires more forethought and planning, but makes maintenance activities more predictable. The types of maintenance commonly associated with proactive maintenance are as follows:

• Preventive Maintenance (PM): Fixing small problems before failure can occur.
• Condition-based Maintenance (CbM): Using sensors to monitor an asset’s condition.
• Predictive Maintenance (PdM): Using sensors, historical data, and real-time data to predict when an asset will fail.

Maintenance Management: A Team Effort

As you have learned so far, maintenance management requires a lot of time, effort, and money to be effective. With so many resources to organize and manage, it would be hard to believe that a single person could manage maintenance alone – and you’d be right!

Maintenance management is a true team effort, involving many different people throughout the organization. Below are the most common roles that contribute to successful maintenance management.

Maintenance Managers

Maintenance managers, of course, lead the way when it comes to carrying out maintenance activities. They are primarily responsible for overseeing the installation, troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance of assets. This includes being in charge of the processes and resources that tie into performing maintenance, such as managing work orders, coordinating parts and labor, and planning and scheduling maintenance. At times, maintenance managers also perform maintenance work alongside their team.

Maintenance Technicians

Maintenance technicians carry out most of the maintenance work on a daily basis. They are the frontline, “boots on the ground” workers who complete the tasks assigned by the maintenance manager. Because they work closely with assets every day, technicians have a deep awareness of how to best care for them, what problems may arise, and how to respond.

In addition to performing maintenance, technicians are also responsible for documenting their work. This includes keeping a record of what was done, what parts were used, and how long the job took to complete. This data is used by others to improve maintenance planning, scheduling, and other decision-making.

Upper Management

Upper management and corporate executives are responsible for helping the organization hit their goals of increased profits and growth. As it relates to maintenance management, increased profitability can be achieved by lowering the costs maintenance incurs through labor and materials. Executives use the information they receive from the maintenance department to make strategic decisions related to standardization, budgets, and capital investments.

Other Departments

The maintenance team does not exist in a vacuum. Other departments, such as production, quality, and operations interact with – and rely on – the maintenance team to operate. These departments help to notify the maintenance team of ongoing or otherwise unnoticed maintenance needs. In return, the maintenance team provides them with functioning, reliable assets used for the production of goods or delivery of services. When things go wrong, these other departments rely on the maintenance team for help.

Maintenance Management Software

As you may have realized, maintenance management is complicated. Fortunately, there are tools like computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software that simplify it.

A CMMS is a platform that gathers, stores, and organizes maintenance information in a central database. It is designed to manage maintenance activities and resources while keeping detailed maintenance records of all assets within an organization. With all of this data at their fingertips, industrial organizations can easily control their maintenance operations based on their maintenance strategy.

The CMMS supports all your needs related to managing work orders, assets, MRO inventory, planning and scheduling, maintenance requests, and reporting. Data stored in a CMMS is also used to help establish baselines and build asset maintenance histories. This information enables teams to analyze trends using key performance indicators (KPIs) and other reports, and identify areas of improvement.

Read our blog article, What is a CMMS? to learn more about maintenance management software.

FTMaintenance Maintenance Management Software

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is the foundation of good maintenance management. A CMMS, such as FTMaintenance helps organizations maintain cost effective maintenance operations. In fact, companies that adopt a CMMS can improve their overall efficiency by up to 65%.

Whether you want to reduce machine downtime, save money on repairs, streamline your day-to-day workflow, or all of the above, a CMMS like FTMaintenance will help you reach these goals.

Learn more about how FTMaintenance helps manage maintenance activities by exploring our CMMS features and services.

The importance of maintenance management cannot be overstated. After all, the maintenance team has a hand in every finished good or service that is consumed. They make sure our power stays on, our clothes are woven correctly, and our food gets packaged on time. Without maintenance management, delivery of these products would be delayed and services would experience interruptions. The reasons listed in this article seek to highlight the importance of maintenance management.

5 Reasons Maintenance Management is Important

Growing Complexity

Today’s buildings and equipment are becoming more automated, and automation adds to complexity. In industrial and commercial buildings, the use of automated HVAC, electronic and pneumatic systems, auxiliary power, and special environmental technologies are becoming more and more common. The potential cost of breakdown to these critical systems and assets is becoming an increasing risk to facility and maintenance management. Even more worrisome, maintenance staffs are being asked to do more with less while systems continue to grow in complexity.

Competition

With competitive marketplace pressures increasing, building owners and facility managers are striving to find new and better ways to contain and control the cost of doing business. As a result of economic pressure, long neglected equipment maintenance and asset management is becoming recognized as another potentially productive, profitable field of management.

Today’s managers are focused on cutting equipment repair costs and improving the efficiency of maintenance and engineering departments. The importance of maintenance management is realized now more than ever.

The Potential Costs for Doing Nothing are High

Industry statistics show that maintenance can account for up to 60% of a plant’s controllable operating costs. When scheduled preventive maintenance is not followed, premature breakdown is a certain outcome. For older machines and equipment with considerable amount of wear and tear, not only is operation more risky but maintenance and repair costs are even higher.

Aside from direct repair costs, there are also the realities of work stoppage, damaged or defective product, missed business opportunities, strained client relationships due to production downtime, employee overtime, and emergency inventory purchasing.

Maintenance Efforts are Misguided

Maintenance teams often perform work that is unnecessary, unproductive, or counter-productive. Preventive maintenance work on equipment that doesn’t need it leads to unnecessary downtime, labor costs, and parts usage.

Technicians often sacrifice wrench time for data entry and retrieval, status reporting, and processing other paperwork. Finally, incorrect re-assembly, misalignment, or other errors actually reduce equipment reliability.

The Old Ways Do Not Work Anymore

Historically, most systems for managing maintenance activities have been manual–everything from index cards and memo files to wall-mounted log boards. These methods are cumbersome, incomplete, and ineffective. What’s more, they are used inconsistently. This further reduces whatever minimal benefits they might have once provided. Computerized maintenance management is a much more robust and profitable method.

Make Maintenance Management Easy with FTMaintenance CMMS

It is clear that having an organized and efficient system of managing maintenance operations is a necessity in today’s industrial environment. FTMaintenance CMMS offers a full suite of maintenance management software features needed by maintenance professionals to organize and efficiently manage maintenance activities, monitor equipment life, and track maintenance costs. See these features in action for yourself — take a tour to get started.