When it comes to deciding which KPIs to track, your main focus is choosing ones which will help you reduce downtime and increase revenue. Having maintenance management software does help with that, but it’s still crucial to know which ones are going to be most beneficial for your manufacturing business. Here are our recommendations for the KPIs your maintenance management software needs to track and how to go about choosing them.
How to choose KPIs
There are many metrics and KPIs to choose from to measure success, but it’s important they’re focused in order to be effective and should link back to your company’s overall goals.
You should focus on:
- Improvement
- Strategy
- Growth
Start by identifying which areas of your business you would like to improve the most. You may want to speed up repair times by 20% or extend the life of your assets by a third; it all depends on your business and your goals. Create your KPIs accordingly, make sure they link back to your business strategy, they’re realistic and support long term sustainability.
Your goals are going to be different from other manufacturing businesses so decide which benchmarks you would like your business to focus on.
Remember this about setting KPIs
When you’re in the process of creating your KPIs remember two things; gain feedback from managers and don’t have too many.
Speak with your team / managers
Maintenance managers are heavily involved in the day-to-day and will have first hand experience of a business’s most urgent problems. It’s important to consult with them and listen to their issues, suggestions and insights into what the business needs.
Limit your KPIs
KPIs are your top priorities so there shouldn’t be too many. If there are, they’ll become metrics and spread your resources thin. When you meet your KPIs in the future you can replace them with newer, more relevant ones as your business grows, evolves and identifies new targets.
KPIs to consider
For manufacturing and maintenance, the most effective KPIs concern shortening repair times, reducing costs and increasing effectiveness. Here are KPIs to consider, but remember to make your choices so they relate back to your business strategy and goals.
Equipment downtime
- Consider how often your assets become unavailable due to emergency breakdowns and track how often assets are available to perform the tasks you need them to.
- It’s important to measure these so you can compare against industry benchmarks. EG, 10% is considered a great figure for unscheduled downtime.
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)
- Looking at assets individually, this records how long between each time it fails and takes an average.
- With this data you can create the goal to improve its MTBF.
Mean Time to Repair (MTR)
- In a similar way to MTBF, this KPI monitors how long it takes for assets to be repaired from the moment they fail.
- Looks at planning, scheduling, diagnosis and work needed to be carried out.
- The metric helps businesses know if the process is efficient enough.
- Once inefficiencies are rectified, a reduction in MTR can show quick results.
Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP)
- Measures how much of your maintenance tasks are actually planned as opposed to emergencies.
- Important to know because planned maintenance is far less expensive and disruptive to the business.
- Work out the measurement by taking your planned maintenance hours and dividing by your total maintenance hours for a specific period.
Maintenance Backlog
- Gain insight by looking at how many work orders are pending in your system.
- This will help you realise whether you have suitable staffing.
- Too little backlog and you’re probably overstaffed. A large backlog means you probably don’t have enough staff.
How do you track KPIs?
New technology has made it much easier for businesses to track their KPIs, know where their costs are coming from and track asset downtimes. Using CMMS software helps track your KPIs easily and effectively and with the OpsBase platform, you can access them all in one place from any device. Take control of your maintenance operations and save time and money to help your business grow. Access your free trial and demo today.
Carmelo Ruggieri
Content Marketing Executive
Carmelo has years of experience in marketing, loves of all things tech and is a regular contributor to the OpsBase blog. He enjoys writing almost as much as he enjoys eating crunchy peanut butter and is likely to be found doing one or the other at any given point in time.