Every hour of unplanned equipment downtime costs industrial facilities an average of $260,000 in lost productivity, wasted labor, and emergency repairs. Yet most maintenance teams still manage operations by gut instinct—no baselines, no benchmarks, no visibility into whether their efforts actually move the needle. The difference between a maintenance department that drains budgets and one that drives profitability comes down to tracking the right Key Performance Indicators. When you measure what matters, you stop guessing and start making decisions backed by real data—decisions that reduce breakdowns, extend asset life, and prove your team's value to leadership. Schedule a free 30-minute KPI strategy session with our maintenance experts to identify which metrics will deliver the fastest ROI for your facility.
What Are Maintenance KPIs and Why Do They Define Operational Success
A maintenance KPI is a measurable target that tells you whether your maintenance program is achieving its goals. Unlike raw metrics that simply count activities (work orders completed, hours logged), KPIs attach those numbers to specific business outcomes—like reducing downtime by 25% or cutting reactive maintenance below 20%. Every metric your team tracks is data; KPIs are the data points that connect daily wrench-turning to strategic objectives like revenue growth, cost control, and regulatory compliance.
Organizations that track maintenance KPIs effectively are three times more likely to see significant improvements in decision-making, according to PwC research. Meanwhile, facilities operating without structured KPI programs leave an estimated 8-15% of their maintenance budget on the table through undetected waste, inefficient scheduling, and preventable equipment failures. Sign up for Oxmaint free and start building your AI-powered KPI dashboard in minutes—no credit card, no complex setup.
The Measurement Gap
58% of Facilities Spend Less Than Half Their Time on Scheduled Maintenance
With nearly half of all maintenance work still reactive, most organizations are hemorrhaging money on emergency repairs that proper KPI tracking would prevent. The shift from reactive firefighting to proactive, data-driven maintenance begins with knowing your numbers.
$50B
Annual cost of unplanned downtime across industrial manufacturing
49%
Of maintenance activities remain reactive rather than preventive
The 15 KPIs That Separate Top-Performing Maintenance Teams from the Rest
World-class maintenance programs do not track dozens of metrics hoping something sticks. They focus on a balanced set of indicators across four critical dimensions: asset reliability, team efficiency, program maturity, and financial performance. Here are the 15 KPIs every maintenance manager should understand—and the benchmarks that define excellence.
Asset Reliability Indicators
01
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
Operating Time / Number of Failures
The cornerstone reliability metric. MTBF tells you how long an asset runs before it breaks down. A rising MTBF trend confirms your preventive strategy is working; a falling one signals hidden degradation.
Industry Avg:200-400 days|World-Class:400+ days
02
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
Total Repair Time / Number of Repairs
Measures your team's speed in restoring failed equipment. High MTTR points to parts shortages, skill gaps, or poor diagnostic processes. After implementing CMMS, one manufacturer reduced MTTR from 580 to 60 hours per month.
Industry Avg:3-5 hours|World-Class:Under 2 hours
03
Equipment Availability Rate
(Total Time - Downtime) / Total Time x 100
The percentage of time your assets are operational and ready. Availability directly drives production capacity and revenue potential. Track daily for critical assets and weekly for supporting equipment.
Industry Avg:90-92%|World-Class:95%+
04
Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)
Total Operating Time / Number of Assets Failed
Lifespan metric for non-repairable components like bearings, bulbs, and consumable parts. Unlike MTBF (for repairable assets), MTTF helps you forecast replacement budgets and prevent surprise failures on critical consumables.
Industry Avg:1,000-5,000 hrs|World-Class:Varies by component
Want to see your MTBF, MTTR, and availability numbers in a live dashboard? Create your free Oxmaint account now and start tracking reliability KPIs automatically from day one—your first dashboard is ready in under 10 minutes.
The single most comprehensive metric in maintenance. OEE captures losses from downtime, speed reductions, and defects in one number. Every 1% improvement in OEE can generate $450K+ in additional revenue for manufacturing operations.
Industry Avg:60-65%|World-Class:85%+
06
Wrench Time (Technician Productivity)
Productive Repair Time / Total Shift Time x 100
How much time do your technicians spend actually fixing things versus hunting for parts, filling out forms, or waiting for approvals? The gap between average (30-35%) and world-class (55-65%) represents enormous untapped labor capacity.
Industry Avg:30-35%|World-Class:55-65%
07
Schedule Compliance
Completed as Scheduled / Total Scheduled x 100
Measures discipline in executing the planned maintenance calendar. Low compliance usually means reactive work is hijacking planned schedules, resource estimates are wrong, or priorities shift too often.
Industry Avg:80-85%|World-Class:90%+
08
Work Order Completion Rate
Completed Work Orders / Total Work Orders x 100
Shows whether your team can keep up with the workload. Consistently low rates reveal understaffing, poor prioritization, or work orders that lack the detail technicians need to execute efficiently.
Industry Avg:85-90%|World-Class:95%+
Maintenance Program Health
09
Preventive Maintenance (PM) Compliance
Completed PMs / Scheduled PMs x 100
The single best leading indicator of maintenance program maturity. If you are not hitting PM schedules, everything downstream suffers—MTBF drops, emergency repairs spike, and costs spiral. This is the KPI to fix first.
Industry Avg:70-80%|World-Class:95%+
10
Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP)
Planned Hours / Total Maintenance Hours x 100
Reveals the balance between planned and reactive work. Organizations spending less than 80% on planned maintenance are operating in firefighting mode—expensive, stressful, and unsustainable.
Industry Avg:55-65%|World-Class:80%+
11
Maintenance Backlog (Weeks of Work)
Outstanding Backlog Hours / Weekly Available Labor Hours
A healthy backlog is 2-4 weeks of work—enough to plan efficiently without overwhelming the team. Growing backlogs mean critical tasks are being deferred, creating compounding risk. Shrinking backlogs below 2 weeks signal idle capacity.
Healthy Range:2-4 weeks|Red Flag:6+ weeks
12
Reactive (Emergency) Maintenance Ratio
Emergency Work Orders / Total Work Orders x 100
Emergency repairs cost 3-5 times more than planned maintenance and burn out your best technicians with unpredictable 2 AM calls. This KPI tracks your progress from chaos to control.
Industry Avg:20-30%|World-Class:Under 10%
Struggling with low PM compliance or a growing maintenance backlog? Schedule a free demo and our maintenance experts will walk you through how Oxmaint's AI engine detects declining KPI trends and alerts your team before small issues become costly breakdowns.
Maintenance Cost as % of Replacement Asset Value (MC/RAV)
Annual Maintenance Cost / Replacement Asset Value x 100
The CFO's favorite maintenance metric. MC/RAV tells you whether you are over-investing (spending too much maintaining old equipment) or under-investing (deferring maintenance until failures cascade).
Industry Avg:3-5%|World-Class:2-3%
14
Cost Per Work Order
Total Maintenance Cost / Number of Work Orders
Tracks spending efficiency at the task level. Sudden spikes reveal parts inflation, scope creep on jobs, or poorly defined work instructions that extend labor hours unnecessarily.
Industry Avg:$300-$600|World-Class:$200-$300
15
Spare Parts Stock-Out Rate
Stock-Out Incidents / Total Parts Requests x 100
When a technician cannot find the right part, MTTR skyrockets, frustration builds, and production losses compound. Every stock-out is a delay that turns a 2-hour repair into an 8-hour crisis. Aim below 2-3% and track which parts fail most often.
Industry Avg:5-8%|World-Class:Under 2%
How Leading and Lagging Indicators Work Together
One of the most common mistakes in KPI tracking is focusing only on lagging indicators—metrics like downtime, MTBF, and total maintenance cost that tell you what already happened. These are your scoreboard. But you cannot change the score by staring at it. You need leading indicators—metrics like PM compliance, schedule compliance, and wrench time—that predict future performance. When leading indicators improve, lagging indicators follow within weeks or months.
Leading Indicators (The Playbook)
Predict future performance — fix these first
PM Compliance Rate
Schedule Compliance
Planned Maintenance Percentage
Wrench Time
Work Order Completion Rate
Lagging Indicators (The Scoreboard)
Confirm results — these improve as a consequence
MTBF / Equipment Reliability
MTTR / Repair Speed
Equipment Downtime
Total Maintenance Cost
OEE / Overall Effectiveness
Why Spreadsheets Fail and AI-Powered CMMS Dashboards Win
Manually tracking 15 KPIs in spreadsheets creates a dangerous illusion of control. By the time data is entered, verified, and compiled into a report, it is already outdated. Worse, manual collection introduces errors that compound over time, eroding confidence in the numbers. AI-powered CMMS platforms like Oxmaint solve this by automating the entire pipeline—from data capture at the point of work to real-time dashboard visualization.
Spreadsheet Tracking
Data entered days or weeks after the event
Human errors compound across hundreds of entries
No automated anomaly detection or trend alerts
Reports are static snapshots, outdated on arrival
Siloed across departments with no unified view
Result: Reactive decisions based on stale data
Oxmaint AI CMMS
Technicians log data on mobile in under 30 seconds
AI validates entries and flags inconsistencies instantly
Predictive alerts detect declining trends before failures
Live dashboards with drill-down by asset, team, or site
One platform connecting maintenance, ops, and finance
Result: Proactive decisions powered by real-time intelligence
Replace Guesswork with AI-Powered Maintenance Intelligence
Oxmaint tracks MTBF, MTTR, OEE, PM compliance, maintenance costs, and every KPI on this page—automatically. Real-time dashboards, predictive alerts, and scheduled executive reports give every stakeholder the visibility they need to make smarter decisions. Join 1,000+ facilities already running data-driven maintenance.
Not every facility should track the same KPIs with equal priority. A food processing plant and a commercial property portfolio face very different challenges. The key is starting with 5-7 KPIs that address your most expensive problems, then expanding as your data maturity grows. Book a free demo to see how Oxmaint auto-configures KPI dashboards tailored to your specific industry during onboarding.
Manufacturing
OEE, MTBF, Wrench Time, Cost/Unit
Production throughput and asset utilization directly impact top-line revenue
Healthcare
Availability, PM Compliance, MTTR
Patient safety and regulatory audits demand documented, near-zero downtime
Fleet & Transport
MTBF, Cost/Asset, Availability
Vehicle uptime and cost-per-mile determine fleet profitability margins
Hospitality
MTTR, PM Compliance, Backlog
Guest experience scores drop when HVAC, plumbing, or elevators are down
Safety compliance and production continuity in high-consequence environments
From Zero to Dashboard: A Practical Implementation Roadmap
You do not need months of planning to start tracking KPIs. With a modern CMMS, most facilities can move from no visibility to a live dashboard in 2-4 weeks. The key is starting small, proving value fast, and expanding based on results. Sign up for Oxmaint today—your team can have a working KPI dashboard before end of week with our guided setup.
1
Week 1-2: Define & Baseline
Select 5 KPIs aligned with your biggest pain points. Audit current data sources. Establish baseline measurements so you know your starting point.
2
Week 3-4: Deploy & Train
Configure Oxmaint dashboards. Train technicians on mobile data capture (under 30 seconds per entry). Connect existing work order systems and sensors.
3
Month 2-3: Review & Act
Hold weekly KPI review meetings. Identify quick-win improvement actions. Adjust targets as real data replaces assumptions and trends emerge.
4
Month 4+: Scale & Optimize
Expand to 10-15 KPIs across more asset classes. Enable AI-powered predictive analytics. Build executive reporting for budget justification and ROI documentation.
A KPI is only as reliable as the data behind it. If technicians are inconsistently logging work order times or incorrectly coding failure modes, your MTTR and MTBF will be meaningless. The foundation of any successful KPI program is a disciplined data collection process—powered by a CMMS that makes accurate entry simple for the team on the floor.
-- Best practice from industrial reliability engineering frameworks
Your Maintenance Data Has a Story to Tell. Start Listening.
Every work order, every repair, every downtime event is a data point waiting to be turned into actionable intelligence. Oxmaint's AI-powered CMMS collects it all automatically, calculates every KPI on this page in real time, and surfaces the insights that help you reduce costs, prevent failures, and prove your team's impact. Stop managing by spreadsheet. Start leading with data.
How many maintenance KPIs should we track to start?
Begin with 3-5 KPIs that directly address your most pressing challenges. If downtime is your biggest problem, start with MTBF, MTTR, and PM compliance. If cost control is the priority, focus on MC/RAV, cost per work order, and planned maintenance percentage. Trying to track 15+ metrics from day one creates noise and dilutes focus. Expand after 3-6 months of consistent data collection. Sign up for Oxmaint free and our AI will recommend the best starter KPIs based on your industry and facility type during onboarding.
What OEE score should my facility target?
A score of 85% or higher is considered world-class for discrete manufacturing. Most facilities average 60-65%. Scores below 75% indicate significant improvement opportunities worth tens of thousands of dollars annually per machine. Focus improvements on the lowest-scoring factor among availability, performance, and quality for maximum impact.
What is the difference between MTBF and MTTF?
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) measures the average operating time between breakdowns for repairable equipment—assets you fix and return to service. MTTF (Mean Time To Failure) measures the total lifespan of non-repairable components that get replaced entirely when they fail. Use MTBF for pumps, motors, and machines; use MTTF for light bulbs, bearings, and consumable parts.
How do I get my technicians to actually use KPI tracking tools?
The key is making data entry effortless. Mobile CMMS apps like Oxmaint let technicians log work, record times, and update asset status in under 30 seconds from their phone. Frame KPIs as team metrics, not individual scorecards. Show the team how better data means fewer emergency calls at 2 AM and more predictable schedules. Book a demo and we will show you exactly how technicians log data on Oxmaint's mobile app in under 30 seconds.
Can Oxmaint integrate with our existing systems to track these KPIs?
Yes. Oxmaint connects with SCADA, ERP, IoT sensors, and existing work order systems through standard protocols and REST APIs. This eliminates duplicate entry, ensures data accuracy, and gives you a single pane of glass for all maintenance KPIs. Whether you run one facility or fifty, the platform consolidates data into unified dashboards with drill-down by site, team, or asset. Sign up today and our onboarding team will map integration options specific to your existing systems at no extra cost.
