Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 1 of 8

LOGIN | REGISTER

MENU

Home / Articles / 2013 / How to calculate your maintenance backlog

How to calculate your maintenance backlog

Stanton McGroarty calculates how much work maintenance departments have piled up.
By J. Stanton McGroarty, CMfgE, CMRP, senior technical editor
Jun 14, 2013

Print Email Tweet Share Share

- A A A A +

The KPI “Weeks of Maintenance Backlog” reflects the amount of work that is lined up to be planned,
scheduled, and performed by the maintenance department.

Derivation: As usual, the concept is simple — how much work does the department have piled up? But
the data still have to be developed and standardized.

To minimize random noise in the KPI, some guidelines need to be in place. For instance, PM and PdM
work often hits the system in large chunks, some of which will not be performed for months. These
chunks, like shutdown work, could create variations in the total workload that would obscure any
progress or slippage generated by the maintenance department. One approach that works well is to limit
the work reported in this KPI as follows:

• Only work to be performed by the maintenance group that is reporting is included. That is, work
performed by outside contractors who are not usually on site, but who arrive for turnarounds or
projects, is not included.
• PM and PdM work is included out to the normal scheduling horizon, usually five to 12 weeks.
Assuming that the flow of PM/PdM work is fairly uniform, this moving line will include the work that is
currently being planned and scheduled, but not a whole year’s worth of condition monitoring.

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 2 of 8

• Standing or permanent work orders, if they exist, should be broken into weekly chunks that are
entered into the backlog in such a way that they support the logic of the point above.

The unit of measure for this KPI is work weeks. The amount of backlog is expressed as work weeks
using the number of man hours of work available and comparing it to the weekly capacity of the
maintenance department. While recognizing that the actual available capacity of the maintenance
department fluctuates from week to week, the department should select an average capacity to use as a
denominator in computing the backlog KPI. This will avoid the creation of additional noise in the data.

Finally, “backlog” is used as meaning available work. It does not matter whether the work is behind
schedule or especially urgent. It must simply be part of the work load that the department is expected to
plan, schedule and perform.

Maintenance backlog is computed as follows:

Maintenance backlog in weeks = Man Hours of Available Work / Number of Man Hours’ Weekly Capacity
in the Maintenance Department.
Significance: More significant than the actual number of weeks’ J. Stanton McGroarty,
backlog the department has on the books is the rate and
CMfgE, CMRP, is
direction of change in the backlog. As maintenance is brought
under control, the backlog typically shrinks to the point where it senior technical editor
stabilizes at the planning horizon plus a few weeks. Many plants of Plant Services. He
will shoot for a three or four month backlog. was formerly consulting
manager for Strategic Asset
It is clear that a high percentage of emergency and urgent Management International (SAMI),
work will disrupt backlog management just as it disrupts any
where he focused on project
other attempts to manage maintenance. In this way the backlog
number provides a supporting reading of how well unscheduled management and training for
maintenance is being minimized. Backlog also provides a sense manufacturing, maintenance and
of whether maintenance capacity is adequate and whether reliability engineering. He has more
broad-based programs like painting and light bulb changing than 30 years of manufacturing and
should be performed by in-house or contracted help. This kind of
maintenance experience in the
long-horizon planning can help to keep the maintenance team
well utilized and still large enough to maintain the needed automotive, defense, consumer
expertise on site. products and process manufacturing
industries. He holds a bachelor of
Getting started: The key data to be created are total science degree in mechanical
maintenance backlog, then the standardized backlog to develop engineering from the Detroit Institute
this KPI, and then the capacity of the maintenance department.
of Technology and a master’s degree
If all maintenance work is performed on work orders, the gross
or total backlog is a straightforward computation. Chances are in management from Central
this list already exists in your planning system. All work orders Michigan University. He can be
should have at least rough estimates from the validation process reached at smcgroarty@putman.net
that converts a work request to a work order. It is necessary for or check out his Google+ profile.
determining whether the work should be performed and by
whom. A rough financial estimate is needed for the same
reasons.

Work requests should be converted into work orders in about a day. A pile of unreviewed work requests
can hide potential disasters; it just can’t be allowed. If work order requests aren’t handled promptly, an

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 3 of 8

unofficial review system always emerges, creating double work and shadow manipulation of priorities.
The official review should happen at least once a day.

When the total workload is developed, the KPI workload can be developed by trimming off the long-
horizon and outsourced work. The result will be the numerator of the KPI ratio.

Similarly, the actual capacity of the maintenance department for each week must be calculated for each
trade before planning has any real significance. This calculation should be performed out to the planning
horizon and updated weekly. This information is used for loading planned work into the schedules for
future weeks. An average should be derived and used for the KPI calculation. The average should be
updated no less than annually and no more than quarterly to preserve the quality of the calculation. Of
course major changes in plant workload or staffing will require spot changes, but these should be very
infrequent. With these two numbers in hand, the backlog KPI can be computed.

Assessment of today’s situation: The weeks of maintenance backlog and changes to the backlog are
key indicators of whether the maintenance operation is controlling the maintenance workload or vice
versa. Decisions about staffing, scheduling method, and use of contractors are all driven by this
information. Backlog information, combined with the rate of completion of scheduled work and a healthy
discussion of schedule breakers (issues that prevent scheduled work from happening) provide a quick
health check of the maintenance program. Combine these with a discussion of whether emergency and
urgent work is being held under 5% of the shop load, and whoever reads the KPIs will have a clear view
of who is winning the battle of equipment availability.

Read Stanton McGroarty's monthly column, Management Measures.

Join the discussion

We welcome your thoughtful comments. Please comply with our Community rules.
All comments will display your user name.

Want to participate in the discussion?

REGISTER FOR FREE

Log in for complete access.

Comments
No one has commented on this page yet.

RSS feed for comments on this page | RSS feed for all comments

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 4 of 8

Related Content

How interlocking KPIs make maintenance problems hard to hide

Stanton McGroarty explains how to build a real-time dashboard for maintenance and reliability.

Establishing budget-based KPIs

Stanton McGroarty explains how to plan the year and live the plan.

Continuous improvement KPIs

Stanton McGroarty says continuous improvement is the soul of manufacturing competitiveness.

Gain control of your maintenance overtime to curb costs

Stanton McGroarty says when unscheduled work creates overtime, production and maintenance…

Is preventive maintenance a second class effort?

Stanton McGroarty asks when the schedule tightens, which work gets cut.

Are you doing the right work at the right time?

Stanton McGroarty says reactive maintenance destroys OEE, creating a huge competitive…

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 5 of 8

Most Popular
Past 7 Days Past 30 Days Past 6 Months All Time

01 How to close the manufacturing workforce skills gap

To develop the workforce needed for smart factories, manufacturers must…

02 Updated Bigfoot CMMS offers half-a-dozen new features

Smartware Group, Inc. will expand capabilities in its latest update to…

03 What you don't know about cybersecurity could cost you

One prescription for cybersecurity is greater internal cooperation and…

04 Report: Enterprise trust in the cloud increases

Verizon's State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2016 report details…

05 Small manufacturers mean big business

Roughly half of Wisconsin's more than 8,800 manufacturers have fewer than…

Smart Industry
Our sister site smartindustry.com specializes in the Industrial Internet of Things. Here is a sample of
what's going on over there.

The Internet of Things meets big industry

Industrial IoT isn’t about producing simple gadgets. These will be sophisticated, elegant systems, but
meeting the performance specs will be a mammoth task.

Better Practices Needed for Securing IoT Systems

Connected manufacturing is great, but not if a hacker breaks in. Infineon Technologies’ Steve Hanna
shared his cautions on security, along with three ways to fight back.

IoT is driving industry transformation

The increased connectivity of the Internet of Things is going to change the way we communicate and do
business.

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 6 of 8

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 7 of 8

About
Contact Us
Advertise
Media Kit
Privacy Policy
Legal / T&C

Content
Blogs
White Papers
Webcasts
Special Reports
Events
Products

Magazine
Subscribe
Digital Edition
Issues Archive
Articles
Reprints

Site Tools
Site Map
Jobs
Knowledge Center
Training / Career Center
CMMS Review

Stay Connected
My Account
Newsletters

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015
Management Measures: How to calculate your maintenance backlog Page 8 of 8

Social Media
RSS

Contact Us | Advertise | Privacy Policy | Legal Disclaimers, Terms & Conditions

Copyright © 2004 - 2015 Plant Services. All rights reserved.
P: 630-467-1300 | 1501 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 400N, Schaumburg, IL 60173

Chemical Processing | Control | Control Design | Food Processing | Industrial Networking | Pharmaceutical
Manufacturing | Pharma QBD | Plant Services | Wellness Foods

http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/06-management-measures-backlog/ 30/11/2015