Benchmarks can help manufacturers track the important metrics they need to know. That helps you stay both profitable and competitive.
That applies to maintenance as well as production. Maintenance management benchmarks help evaluate your team’s performance, so you can determine when improvements are necessary.
Using benchmarks for your maintenance department helps you understand where your team is now, how far they need to go, and what needs to happen to get there.
What Are Benchmarks?
Organizations use benchmarks as a systematic process for continually measuring and evaluating business practices. Those metrics are compared with industry standards to determine how well your team is performing and when changes need to be made.
Using benchmarks, you can identify best practices that drive the metrics. The benefit of benchmarks is they compare absolutes while also showing trends, providing more business intelligence for data-driven decision making.
Maintenance Benchmarking Best Practices
Maintenance benchmarks help you measure the effectiveness of your maintenance strategy.
First, you start by measuring your team’s metrics. Use your CMMS data to measure your team’s current key performance indicators (KPIs) and create a baseline.
Second, you evaluate your company’s performance by comparing your metrics and processes with those of other organizations. Research your industry’s benchmarks to see how you’re performing and where you should look for improvements.
You can find benchmarks from industry associations, maintenance journals, benchmark databases, and other sources. Additionally, use your professional network to find common benchmarks that your industry uses.
Manufacturing Maintenance Benchmarks You Need to Know
Maintenance metrics give you insight into how your facility is operating. As a result, you’ll understand how both your people and your assets are working. And, of course, you can determine if you’re on track to meet your organization’s bigger goals.
You’ll want to choose metrics that are relevant to your organization and its future plans. They also should be easily understandable by both your management team and your maintenance team.
Common benchmarks in manufacturing include:
- Planned maintenance tasks vs. total maintenance tasks
- Planned and scheduled maintenance as a % of hours worked
- Unplanned downtime
- Reactive maintenance tasks
- Maintenance overtime
- Work orders reworked as a percentage of total work orders
- Training
- Safety
However, you’ll choose the metrics that reflect your specific industry. For example, benchmarks in food processing will follow different benchmarks than automobile production. Maintenance cost as a percentage of estimated plant replacement value, for example, is usually higher in discrete manufacturing plants than in continuous processing operations.
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