Why maintenance KPIs matter
You cannot improve what you do not measure. That principle applies everywhere in operations, but it is especially true for maintenance because the costs of poor maintenance are largely invisible until something breaks. Equipment downtime, emergency repair premiums, shortened asset life, and safety incidents are all consequences of maintenance that is not being managed by the numbers.
The shift from reactive to preventive maintenance is well understood. Most operations managers know that planned work is cheaper and safer than unplanned work. But running a preventive maintenance programme is only half the job. The other half is measuring whether that programme is actually working, where it is falling short, and what to adjust. That is what KPIs do.
Industry benchmarks are useful as a starting point. Research consistently shows that reactive maintenance costs three to nine times more than planned maintenance for the same repair. Best-in-class operations run at over 90 per cent planned work. Industry statistics put the average wrench time (hands-on productive maintenance) at just 25 to 35 per cent of a technician's shift. These numbers give you context, but your own data is what drives decisions.
The KPIs covered in this guide are the ones that matter most for teams running preventive maintenance programmes. They are not theoretical. Each one connects directly to either cost, uptime, or safety, and each one can be measured with a standard CMMS or maintenance management system.
PM schedule compliance
PM schedule compliance is the single most important leading indicator for any preventive maintenance programme. It measures the percentage of scheduled maintenance tasks that were completed on time during a given period. If your PM compliance is low, every other maintenance metric will suffer because the preventive work that drives improvement simply is not getting done.
How to calculate it
PM Compliance (%) = (PM tasks completed on time / PM tasks scheduled) x 100
"On time" typically means within the scheduled window. If a service is due in week 12 and the work order is completed in week 14, that counts as a miss even though the work was eventually done. The value of preventive maintenance comes from doing it at the right time, not just doing it eventually.
What good looks like
- Below 70%: The programme exists on paper but is not being executed. Root causes are usually scheduling conflicts, parts unavailability, or too many emergency jobs consuming technician time
- 70 to 85%: Average. The programme is running but there are systemic issues holding it back
- 85 to 95%: Good. The team is consistently executing planned work with occasional misses
- Above 95%: Best-in-class. Very few operations sustain this level, and it requires mature planning, reliable parts supply, and disciplined scheduling
What drives PM compliance down
The most common reasons for missed PMs are emergency breakdowns that pull technicians off planned work, parts not being available when the work order is due, poor scheduling that creates conflicts, and too many PMs scheduled relative to available labour hours. A good preventive maintenance scheduling system helps with the planning side, but improving compliance usually requires addressing the root causes of unplanned work as well.
MTBF and MTTR
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) are the two reliability metrics that show whether your preventive maintenance is actually improving asset performance. MTBF tells you how often things break. MTTR tells you how quickly you fix them. Together, they define your equipment availability.
MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures
MTBF = Total operating hours / Number of failures
A higher MTBF means the asset runs longer between breakdowns. This is the metric that should trend upward as your preventive maintenance programme matures. If you are servicing equipment at the right intervals with the right procedures, failures should become less frequent over time.
MTTR: Mean Time To Repair
MTTR = Total repair downtime / Number of repairs
A lower MTTR means you restore equipment to service faster when it does fail. MTTR is driven by how quickly the failure is detected, how fast a technician responds, whether the right parts are available, and whether the repair procedure is documented and accessible.
How they work together
| Metric | What it measures | Goal direction | Improved by |
|---|---|---|---|
| MTBF | Time between breakdowns | Higher is better | Better PM execution, root cause analysis, equipment upgrades |
| MTTR | Speed of repair | Lower is better | Parts availability, documented procedures, technician skills, faster detection |
Equipment availability can be calculated from these two metrics: Availability = MTBF / (MTBF + MTTR). An asset with an MTBF of 500 hours and an MTTR of 8 hours has an availability of 98.4 per cent. Track MTBF and MTTR at the individual asset level and at the fleet or equipment-class level to spot patterns.
Maintenance cost metrics
Reliability is only half the picture. The other half is cost. An asset that never breaks down but costs a fortune to maintain is not well-managed either. Cost metrics connect maintenance performance to financial outcomes, which is what leadership and finance teams care about most.
Maintenance cost as a percentage of RAV
Replacement Asset Value (RAV) is the current cost to replace all the assets you maintain. Maintenance cost as a percentage of RAV tells you how much you are spending to keep those assets running relative to what they are worth.
Maintenance cost % of RAV = (Annual maintenance spend / Total replacement asset value) x 100
The industry benchmark is 2 to 5 per cent. Below 2 per cent and you may be undermaintaining. Above 5 per cent suggests excessive reactive work, ageing assets that should be replaced, or inefficient maintenance processes. Use the maintenance savings calculator to model where your spending sits.
Planned vs unplanned cost ratio
Separate your total maintenance spend into planned work (preventive and predictive) and unplanned work (reactive and emergency). Research consistently shows that reactive maintenance costs three to nine times more than planned maintenance for the same repair. The premium comes from rush parts orders, overtime labour, secondary damage from running equipment to failure, and production losses.
A healthy target is 80 per cent or more of maintenance cost on planned work. If your ratio is inverted, with most spend going to unplanned work, that is the clearest possible signal that your PM programme needs attention.
Cost per unit of production
For operations that produce a measurable output (tonnes, units, hours of operation), dividing maintenance cost by production volume gives you a normalised metric that accounts for changes in activity level. This is more useful than raw maintenance spend for benchmarking across sites or comparing year-on-year performance when production volumes fluctuate.
Wrench time and productivity
Wrench time is the percentage of a maintenance technician's shift spent doing actual hands-on maintenance work. It sounds simple, but it is one of the most revealing metrics in maintenance management because it exposes how much of your labour investment is actually producing value.
The industry reality
The industry average for wrench time is 25 to 35 per cent. That means a technician on an eight-hour shift spends roughly two to three hours with tools in hand. The rest goes to:
- Travel time: Moving between jobs, sites, or to and from the workshop
- Waiting for parts: Parts not staged, not in stock, or locked in a store with no one to issue them
- Paperwork and admin: Filling in paper work orders, looking up procedures, writing reports
- Searching for tools and information: Locating equipment, finding manuals, tracking down asset history
- Scheduling and coordination: Waiting for instructions, attending meetings, coordinating with operators
Best-in-class operations achieve 55 to 65 per cent wrench time. That is nearly double the average, and it comes primarily from better planning, not from making technicians work harder.
How digital systems improve wrench time
Modern maintenance management platforms attack wrench time from multiple angles. Mobile work orders eliminate paper shuffling. Digital parts lookup reduces time searching for inventory. Automated scheduling minimises coordination overhead. Asset location data from tracking systems reduces time finding equipment. Digital maintenance histories mean technicians arrive at a job already knowing what was done last time. Our reporting features can track these productivity gains over time.
A 10 percentage-point improvement in wrench time across a team of ten technicians is equivalent to hiring one additional technician at no extra labour cost. That is the kind of productivity gain that makes a compelling business case.
Setting targets
The most common mistake with maintenance KPIs is setting targets based on industry best-in-class numbers from day one. If your PM compliance is currently 55 per cent, setting a target of 95 per cent is not motivating. It is demoralising. Effective target setting starts from your current baseline and works upward in achievable increments.
Recommended targets by maturity
| Metric | Industry average | Good | Best-in-class |
|---|---|---|---|
| PM compliance | 70 to 80% | 85 to 90% | Above 95% |
| Planned work ratio | 50 to 60% | 75 to 85% | Above 90% |
| Maintenance cost % of RAV | 3 to 5% | 2 to 3% | Below 2% |
| Wrench time | 25 to 35% | 40 to 55% | 55 to 65% |
| MTTR | Equipment-specific | 20 to 30% below baseline | 50%+ below baseline |
| MTBF | Equipment-specific | 20 to 30% above baseline | 50%+ above baseline |
The baseline-first approach
Before setting any targets, spend 30 to 60 days collecting baseline data. You need to know where you are before you can decide where to go. Once you have a baseline, aim for 10 to 20 per cent improvement per quarter on your weakest metric. That pace is aggressive enough to show results within a year but realistic enough that teams do not burn out chasing impossible numbers.
Focus on one or two metrics at a time. PM compliance is always the right starting point because it is a leading indicator. If you fix compliance, MTBF, cost ratios, and wrench time tend to improve as a downstream consequence. Trying to fix everything simultaneously spreads effort too thin and delivers marginal improvement across the board instead of meaningful improvement where it matters most.
Building a dashboard
Measuring KPIs is only valuable if the data reaches the people who can act on it. A maintenance dashboard is not a report that gets emailed once a month and ignored. It is a live view of maintenance performance that drives daily and weekly decisions.
What to include
Keep the dashboard focused. Five to seven metrics is the right range. Too many, and it becomes noise. For most operations, the core dashboard should show:
- PM compliance for the current period (weekly and rolling monthly)
- Open work order count split by planned and unplanned
- MTBF trend for critical asset classes (trending up or down)
- Maintenance cost month-to-date against budget
- Overdue PMs count and ageing (how far past due)
- Planned vs unplanned work ratio for the current month
Review cadence
Two review rhythms work best. A weekly operational review where the maintenance supervisor or planner looks at PM compliance, overdue work, and the coming week's schedule. This is a 15-minute check, not a meeting. And a monthly strategic review where maintenance leadership looks at cost trends, reliability metrics, and progress against quarterly targets. This review should include someone from finance or operations leadership to maintain accountability.
Who should see what
Technicians need to see their own PM compliance and open work orders. Supervisors need site-level compliance, overdue counts, and unplanned work trends. Maintenance managers need cross-site comparisons, cost metrics, and reliability trends. Leadership needs maintenance cost as a percentage of RAV, major equipment availability, and progress against strategic targets.
The best dashboards are not complex. They are visible, updated automatically, and reviewed consistently. A reporting system that pulls data directly from your work order management eliminates the manual effort of building reports and ensures the numbers are always current.
Start with the basics. Track PM compliance, MTBF, MTTR, maintenance cost, and planned work ratio. Set targets from your baseline, not from an industry ideal. Review weekly. Adjust quarterly. The teams that improve fastest are not the ones with the most sophisticated dashboards. They are the ones that act on the data consistently. Start a free trial to see how MapTrack's maintenance management and reporting tools can support your KPI tracking from day one.
