You’ve probably heard the term benchmark in relation to stock prices,

but it’s also a great way to evaluate and improve your business. In this
article, we’ll break down what maintenance benchmarks are and how
they can help you make your maintenance department more efficient.

What is a benchmark?
A benchmark is a standard of comparison. A benchmark can be used
as a reference point for measuring progress and comparing
performance with other organizations. Benchmarking is a way to get
an objective measure of your organization’s performance so you can
see how well it stacks up against other companies in the same
industry or sector.

In business, there are many types of benchmarks:

• Financial measures such as profit margins or return on
investment (ROI)
• Non-financial measures such as customer satisfaction surveys
• Process benchmarks such as total quality management (TQM)

How do you know what’s suitable as a maintenance

benchmark?
In maintenance, a good benchmark should have the following
qualities:

1. Relevant: You’re measuring something that will help you improve

your business. For example, measuring how long it takes someone
in your company to perform maintenance on an asset would be
relevant if you want to improve downtime. If, on the other hand,
you were trying to increase sales by selling more products (a
 common goal), then measuring how much time your assets spend
creating the product would be important to measure.
2. Accurate: The measurements must accurately reflect what they’re
supposed to (e.g. if we’re measuring downtime on an asset but only
tracking one asset at our company instead of all the assets that may
be down within 24 hours).

What are some examples of maintenance

benchmarks?
Below are a few examples of maintenance activities that can be
benchmarked:
• Frequency of preventive maintenance
• Frequency of corrective maintenance
• Equipment downtime (annual or monthly), mean time between

failures (MTBF), time to failure after installation

• Average repair time (annual), mean time to repair (MTTR)

Ramesh Gulati, the author of Maintenance and Reliability: Best

Practices, examines key performance indicators that can be easily
measured and compared across businesses and industries. His
book Maintenance and Reliability: Best Practices provides the metrics of
well-performing companies. Most importantly, he outlines the
performance of world-class companies so that you can compare it.
Here are some common maintenance KPIs and both average and
world-class benchmarks according to Gulati:

Performance Measure Best Practice World Class

Maintenance cost 2-9% 2-3.5%

as percent of Replacement Asset Value

Maintenance material cost 1-4% 0.25-1.25%

as percent of Replacement Asset Value

Schedule Compliance 40-90% >90%

 Percent (%) Planned Work 30-90% >85%

Production Breakdown Losses 2-12% 1-2%

Parts Stock-out Rate 2-10% 1-2%

There are two things to consider in the table:

1. First, the performance is always measured as a percent. This means

that the numbers are normalized to account for the size of the
machine, total work orders being completed, or total production
cost. In this case, taking the percentage is a way of normalizing
your maintenance performance. Your data is more likely to tell you
your actual performance status.
2. Second, even world-class companies aren’t perfect. They make
mistakes. Unplanned breakdowns happen despite the best
intentions, equipment, and training of a top company. While you
should aim to achieve zero breakdowns, you should always have
a preventive maintenance plan to help you cope when something
goes wrong.

What are the steps to benchmark maintenance

activities?
1. Define the problem before starting on the solution. For
example, perhaps your team is doing too much reactive
maintenance and, as a result, isn’t hitting production targets due to
unplanned downtime.
2. Set goals that are ambitious but realistic. If your team is doing
too much reactive maintenance, create a process for the team to
work through preventive maintenance strategies together for each
asset. From there, you can set up new production targets for the
team to achieve now that this new process is in place.
3. Have a plan step for when things go wrong. Let’s say your asset
breaks down completely, and it’s not a simple fix with a part
 replacement. Having a backup plan for when the worst-case
scenario might happen is always a good idea.
4. Be patient and give yourself time to achieve your goal. Set up a
meeting with your team to check on your progress. Some teams set
these up at 30, 60, and 90-day intervals and cross-compare the
previous 30 days to the current.

Holding your team accountable to the benchmark

To hold your maintenance team accountable, you must set goals for
them (see step 2 listed above). You can do this by assessing your
current performance against the benchmark and then setting goals
that are slightly higher than what you’re currently doing. For example,
suppose your organization has been performing an average of 10
preventive maintenance activities per month on machines A and B
over the last six months. In that case, one goal could be 11 PMs per
month for these two machines. We can also convert benchmarks to
PM percentage, so for example, out of all maintenance activities on
asset A, the goal is for 80% of it to be planned and scheduled.

Benchmarking works because it allows you to

understand where you are relative to others
Benchmarking is a great way to improve your maintenance activities.
It allows you to understand where you are relative to others and helps
identify areas where you need improvement. Benchmarking works
because it gives everyone on the team a common goal they can work
towards, increasing motivation and productivity in the long run.