Why metrics matter
You cannot improve what you do not measure. This is a cliche because it is true. Maintenance teams that track the right metrics make better decisions about where to invest time, money and attention. Teams that operate without metrics rely on gut feel, anecdote and whoever shouts loudest, none of which optimise outcomes.
The purpose of maintenance metrics is not to create dashboards for the sake of dashboards. It is to answer three practical questions: Are our assets reliable enough? Is our maintenance programme working? Are we spending the right amount? Every metric you track should help answer one of these questions. If it does not, it is noise.
This guide covers the metrics that matter most for Australian operations teams, grouped into four categories: reliability, programme effectiveness, cost and workforce. For each metric, we explain what it measures, how to calculate it, what target to aim for and what to do when it trends in the wrong direction.
Reliability metrics
Reliability metrics tell you how well your assets are performing. They answer the question: are our assets available and functional when we need them?
Mean time between failures (MTBF)
MTBF measures the average operating time between unplanned failures for a specific asset or asset group. Calculate it by dividing total operating hours in a period by the number of unplanned failures in that period.
Example: A pump operates for 4,000 hours in a year and experiences 4 unplanned failures. MTBF = 4,000 / 4 = 1,000 hours.
A rising MTBF means your preventive maintenance programme is catching problems earlier and assets are running longer between breakdowns. A falling MTBF indicates deteriorating reliability, which could stem from missed services, ageing assets, poor parts quality or operating conditions that have changed.
Track MTBF at both the individual asset level and the fleet level. Fleet-level MTBF reveals overall programme effectiveness. Asset-level MTBF highlights specific equipment that needs attention.
Mean time to repair (MTTR)
MTTR measures the average time from when a failure is reported to when the asset is returned to service. Calculate it by dividing total repair time (across all failures in a period) by the number of failures.
Example: Over a quarter, your team spends a total of 120 hours repairing 15 breakdowns. MTTR = 120 / 15 = 8 hours per repair.
A high MTTR often indicates parts availability issues (waiting for parts to arrive), diagnostic difficulty (time spent finding the root cause), skills gaps (wrong technician assigned) or access constraints (waiting for production to release the asset). Reducing MTTR focuses on removing these delays rather than simply asking technicians to work faster.
Asset availability rate
The percentage of your asset fleet that is available for use on any given day. Calculate it as: (total assets - assets under repair or out of service) / total assets x 100.
Most commercial operations target 90 to 95 per cent availability. Below 85 per cent, you are likely compensating with overtime, rental equipment, or missed commitments. Track availability daily for critical asset groups and investigate any asset that is unavailable for more than 48 hours.
Programme effectiveness metrics
These metrics tell you whether your maintenance programme is executing as intended. They answer the question: are we doing what we planned to do?
PM compliance rate
The percentage of scheduled preventive maintenance work orders completed within their target window. Calculate it as: completed PMs on time / total PMs scheduled x 100.
| PM compliance | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| >90% | Strong execution. Programme is well-resourced and disciplined. |
| 80-90% | Acceptable but room for improvement. Investigate causes of missed PMs. |
| 70-80% | Problematic. Reactive work is likely displacing planned work. |
| <70% | The PM programme exists on paper but is not being executed. Expect rising breakdowns. |
PM compliance is the single most important leading indicator of maintenance programme health. A declining PM compliance rate predicts increasing breakdowns 3 to 6 months down the track.
Planned vs unplanned maintenance ratio
The percentage of total work orders that are planned (preventive, scheduled corrective) versus unplanned (breakdowns, emergency repairs). World-class operations target an 80:20 split.
If your ratio is closer to 50:50 or worse, your preventive programme is not catching enough issues before they become failures. This metric is particularly powerful because it reflects the maturity of your entire maintenance approach. The journey from reactive to preventive maintenance is visible in this ratio over time.
Schedule compliance
The percentage of all scheduled work orders (not just PMs) completed within their target window. This measures how well the scheduling process converts plans into action. Target 85 to 90 per cent for field operations, accounting for the travel, access and weather variables that affect field scheduling.
Cost metrics
Cost metrics answer the question: are we spending the right amount on maintenance? Too little means deferred maintenance and rising breakdowns. Too much may mean over-servicing, inefficient practices or assets that should be replaced rather than repaired.
Maintenance cost per asset
Total maintenance cost for a specific asset divided by a normalising factor (operating hours, kilometres or time period). This lets you compare similar assets and identify outliers.
Example: Two identical excavators in your fleet. Excavator A costs $45 per operating hour to maintain. Excavator B costs $78 per operating hour. The discrepancy warrants investigation: is B older, working in harsher conditions, or experiencing recurring issues that a targeted repair could resolve?
Maintenance cost as percentage of asset replacement value
Annual maintenance cost divided by the asset's current replacement value, expressed as a percentage. Industry benchmarks suggest that when this ratio consistently exceeds 40 to 50 per cent, the asset is approaching end of useful economic life and replacement should be evaluated.
Parts cost as percentage of total maintenance cost
Parts typically represent 40 to 60 per cent of total maintenance expenditure. If parts spend is climbing relative to labour, you may be replacing components more frequently than necessary, using premium parts where standard equivalents suffice, or experiencing a quality issue from a supplier. If labour is climbing relative to parts, investigate workshop efficiency: are technicians spending excessive time on diagnostics, travel or paperwork?
Emergency maintenance cost premium
Calculate the average cost of an emergency repair versus a planned repair for the same type of work. Industry data consistently shows that emergency repairs cost 3 to 5 times more than planned work when you factor in overtime labour, express parts shipping, secondary damage from operating a degraded asset, and lost production during the unplanned outage. This metric makes the business case for preventive maintenance tangible and concrete.
Workforce metrics
Workforce metrics assess whether your maintenance team is being used effectively. They answer the question: are our people spending their time on the right activities?
Wrench time
The percentage of a technician's available hours spent performing actual maintenance tasks (hands on tools). The remainder is consumed by travel, waiting for parts, paperwork, meetings, breaks and other non-productive time. World-class operations achieve 55 to 65 per cent wrench time.
Improving wrench time is one of the highest-leverage changes a maintenance team can make. Every 5 per cent improvement in wrench time across a 10-person team is equivalent to gaining half a technician of productive capacity without hiring.
Work order completion rate
The number of work orders completed per technician per week. This varies significantly by work type (a major overhaul takes days; a filter change takes 30 minutes), so it is most useful when tracked by work type category. Declining completion rates may indicate poor planning, parts shortages, or technicians being pulled into non-maintenance activities.
Overtime percentage
Total overtime hours divided by total hours worked. A healthy target is under 10 per cent. Sustained overtime above 15 per cent indicates a capacity shortfall that is being papered over with overtime rather than addressed structurally. High overtime also correlates with lower quality work, higher safety risk and increased staff turnover.
Building a reporting cadence
Metrics are only useful if they are reviewed regularly and drive action. The following cadence works well for most operations.
Weekly operational review
A 15 to 30-minute meeting covering:
- Overdue work orders (count and age)
- Schedule compliance for the past week
- Open P1 and P2 items
- Upcoming high-priority work for the coming week
- Any asset availability issues
Monthly performance review
A 30 to 60-minute meeting covering trend-level KPIs:
- MTBF and MTTR trends (month over month)
- PM compliance rate
- Planned vs unplanned ratio
- Maintenance cost per asset (top 10 outliers)
- Backlog volume and age distribution
- Wrench time (if measured)
Quarterly strategic review
A broader review with operations and finance stakeholders:
- Total maintenance spend versus budget
- Asset availability against operational targets
- Repair-versus-replace decisions for high-cost assets
- Programme changes: interval adjustments, new predictive maintenance initiatives, staffing needs
- Compliance audit readiness
MapTrack's reporting module generates these KPIs automatically from work order and asset data, eliminating the manual spreadsheet effort that typically causes reporting cadences to lapse after the first month.
Common measurement mistakes
Measuring the wrong things, or measuring the right things badly, is worse than not measuring at all because it creates false confidence. Avoid these common mistakes.
- Tracking too many metrics. Start with five to seven core KPIs. Every additional metric dilutes focus. Add metrics only when you have a specific question that existing metrics cannot answer.
- Measuring activity instead of outcomes. The number of work orders completed is an activity metric. MTBF and asset availability are outcome metrics. A team can complete hundreds of work orders and still have poor reliability if they are working on the wrong things.
- Inconsistent data entry. If technicians do not consistently record hours, parts and completion notes, your metrics will be unreliable. Enforce data quality standards at the work order level. A CMMS with required fields prevents incomplete records from being saved.
- No baseline. Metrics are meaningless without context. Before launching improvement initiatives, establish a three-month baseline for each KPI. Then measure changes against that baseline.
- Ignoring leading indicators. PM compliance and backlog age are leading indicators that predict future breakdowns. MTBF and emergency repair costs are lagging indicators that confirm what already happened. If you only track lagging indicators, you are always reacting to problems that a leading indicator could have prevented.
- Treating metrics as punitive. If technicians believe their KPIs are used to punish rather than improve, they will game the data. Frame metrics as tools for identifying process improvements, not individual performance judgements.
The goal of maintenance measurement is continuous improvement. Start with a few core metrics, build a regular review cadence, and let the data guide your decisions about where to invest in your maintenance strategy. If your current system makes data collection manual and painful, book a demo to see how MapTrack automates the capture and reporting of the KPIs that drive maintenance performance.
