Maintenance KPIs
January 1st 2008

In March 2007 a new maintenancerelated British Standard was published – BS EN 15341, Maintenance – Maintenance Key Performance Indicators writes Paul Dean CEng, director of Operations, Shire Systems. The standard aims to help organisations in all sectors appraise and improve their asset maintenance efficiency and effectiveness in pursuit of better global performance and competitive advantage.

The standard defines a structure of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – 24 'economical', 21 'technical' and 26 'organisational'. You're urged to select the indicators which align directly with your business objectives, then apply them to the management of maintenance activities within your organisation.

Amongst the set of organisational indictors is O24 – the percentage of the direct maintenance personnel using CMMS software. The implications for best maintenance practice are clear. In the first place, an organisation is expected to have a CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System) and secondly, workers carrying out maintenance tasks should be using it in a hands-on manner.

It's highly impractical to administer day-to-day maintenance activities and compile KPI trend information with a paper-based system. Maintenance is 90% information management and 10% engineering, so the value of CMMS usage as a driver of operational performance can't be over-stated.

There's a direct relationship between these causal factors and the actual maintenance performance achievable in the workplace. Improvements made in these areas assuredly feed through to higher future plant availability, workforce productivity, product quality, people safety and protection of the environment.

Obsession with performance measurement for its own sake diverts attention away from the real business of performance improvement, squandering scarce time and resources. Be particularly wary that your CMMS doesn't foster the gathering of piles of dubious data for processing into stacks of valueless reports. With its hefty data crunching and output capability, a CMMS can very easily develop into the centre of attention. But it's just a tool, albeit a very important one, and should never become a distraction away from the hands-on management of maintenance improvements in the workplace.

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