October - Library - Central Queensland University

16
Metrics For
Managing Maintenance
T
Raymond P. McFarland (USA)
Recently published in the Reliability Magazine, Vol 10 Issue 3.
This paper was originally presented at the 2003 SMRP conference.
he Maintenance Manager is faced with the challenge of offsetting or moderating increased cost through better use of
cost control techniques. The principal shortcoming in cost control methodologies is the absence of measurements that relate value
received to maintenance dollars spent. There are two primary metric types, lead metrics and lag metrics. The lag metric the
Maintenance Manager is most familiar with; perf o rmance to budget. But if the emphasis is placed on the lead metrics the lag metric
will generally turn out as desired. The emphasis should be to improve the Maintenance Manager’s ability to measure value re c e i v e d ,
and this paper provides some criteria that can be used to measure value received in maintenance activities.
The maintenance metrics not only serve as the basis for evaluating benefits received, but they also serve as the measure of
achievement towards goals. Each metric should have a target goal the Maintenance Manager is striving to achieve. The goals
acts like the par rating for each hole on the golf course. They are goals that can be achieved with very good perf o rmance, but must
be combined together to measure the total effectiveness of the maintenance operation. One metric by itself is not enough; they
must be brought together to give the complete picture of the maintenance operation. At the end of this paper is a table of
representative values for each of the 30 metrics presented.
The following paragraphs provide the metrics that allow the Maintenance Manger to assess the effectiveness of the maintenance
operation. The paragraphs describe the periodic charts and metrics pre p a red for the Maintenance Manager to allow a quick
overview of the health of the Maintenance organization.
Planning & Scheduling Metrics
Unreported Man-hours
The Maintenance Supervisor records on the daily work schedule the actual hours expended by the maintenance crew each day.
The first metric is there f o re, the relationship between the actual hours re p o rted by the Maintenance Supervisor and the dire c t
worked hours paid to the craftspeople. This is critical information because all other reports and metrics are based on the hours
and information re p o rted by the Maintenance Superv i s o r. The metrics that follow in this paper depend upon the values derived
f rom the work order system data, and it is important for all maintenance work to flow through the work order system. A wide variance
between paid hours and
re p o rted hours on the daily
work schedule will discount
the reliability of all other
re p o rts. The Maintenance
Supervisor must account for
e v e ry hour worked by the
c re w, including all overt i m e .
U n re p o rted man-hours
re p resent the diff e re n c e
between hours re p o rted on
the daily work schedule and
the man-hours-paid. The
c o n t rol metric is unre p o rt e d
hours as a percent of total
hours paid, and the targ e t
f i g u re is zero percent (See
Figure 1).
Figure 1