Industry — Maintenance and Reliability
Maintenance and Reliability
Many maintenance teams already have reports. What they do not always have is confidence in the information behind them. Poor work orders, poor planning, missing parts and weak asset master data create problems long before reporting starts.
In Ricky's Words
Why I enjoy working in maintenance and reliability
Maintenance is where I started and it is still the work I enjoy most. It is honest. If the planning is wrong, the job fails on the tools and everyone knows about it. I like helping planners and schedulers get the foundations right, because a good week of maintenance is quietly one of the most profitable things a business can do. It is also the area where fixing the data actually changes the day-to-day work.
Common Challenges
What we see most often
- Poor equipment hierarchy
- Poor work order quality
- Poor planning visibility
- Poor scheduling
- Missing parts
- Trades waiting for information
- Reactive maintenance culture
- Poor CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System) confidence
- Poor failure reporting
- Lack of reliability visibility
- Maintenance and operations misalignment
- Tribal knowledge
Capability 01
Business Intelligence and Reporting
Maintenance is judged on the production it protects. Reporting connects schedule compliance and backlog health to the availability and output they deliver, so maintenance can defend its plan with numbers.
Examples
- Schedule compliance, backlog age and work order ageing by asset and crew
- Availability and downtime reporting with production hours lost costed out
- Planned versus reactive ratio trended against unplanned failure rate
- Maintenance cost per operating hour by asset class, reconciled to finance
- A weekly maintenance pack that opens the planning meeting instead of following it
KPIs that matter
KPI reference for maintenance and reliability
The measures we most often build for this industry, why each one matters, how it is calculated and the bands we benchmark against.
| KPI | Why it matters | How to measure | World class | Benchmark | Typical |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule compliance % | Did we do the work we planned? | Scheduled jobs completed ÷ jobs scheduled. | ≥90% | 75–85% | 50–75% |
| Planned work % | Are we ahead of failure or behind it? | Planned hours ÷ total maintenance hours. | ≥85% | 70–80% | 50–70% |
| Asset availability % | Can the equipment do the work? | (Calendar hours − downtime) ÷ calendar hours. | ≥92% | 85–90% | 78–85% |
| Backlog weeks | Is the backlog under control? | Ready backlog hours ÷ weekly crew capacity. | 2–4 weeks | 4–8 weeks | 10+ weeks |
| Maintenance cost per operating hour | Is reliability spend efficient? | Total maintenance cost ÷ operating hours. | Falling | Flat | Rising |
Capability 02
Data Engineering, Fabric and AI Readiness
Reliability reporting is only as good as the asset register and work history behind it. We fix the structure so failure history is complete and comparable across sites.
Examples
- Clean and govern the asset hierarchy, functional locations and equipment classes
- Standardise failure, cause and remedy coding so history can actually be analysed
- Bring the CMMS, condition monitoring and cost data into one model
- Automated data quality checks on work order completion, hours and coding
- A complete failure history that supports reliability analysis and future prediction
Capability 03
Power Platform and Business Applications
Planners lose hours to email, spreadsheets and chasing. We build the small applications that take that time back and keep the work history clean.
Examples
- Mobile defect and work request capture with photos, straight into the CMMS queue
- Planning and scheduling boards that show the week without a spreadsheet
- Shutdown scope capture, approval and readiness tracking
- Condition report capture that closes the loop to a work order
- Automated notifications for overdue, at-risk and critical work
Capability 04
Continuous Improvement and Business Process Improvement
Reliability improves when the routine improves. We rebuild the weekly planning and scheduling cycle so the plan is achievable and the schedule is respected.
Examples
- Map the defect-to-work-order-to-completion cycle and remove the queues in it
- Rebuild the weekly planning and scheduling routine with clear ownership
- Bad actor analysis turned into a standing elimination program
- Standard job plans for repeatable work so planning effort is spent once
- Improvement actions tracked to a measured change in availability
What we work on here
- Poor equipment hierarchy
- Poor work order quality
- Poor planning visibility
- Poor scheduling
- Missing parts
- Trades waiting for information
What changes for you
- Better planning and scheduling
- Reduced wasted labour hours
- Improved CMMS trust
- Better reliability visibility
- Better work order quality
- Less reactive maintenance
- Stronger maintenance and operations alignment
Learn and apply
Maintenance Untangled
Johnstone Business Intelligence proudly co-hosts the Maintenance Untangled Podcast alongside Derick Martins from Asset Optimisation. The podcast explores real-world discussions around maintenance, operations and data.
- Asset hierarchy
- Work management
- Planning and scheduling
- Backlog control
- PM optimisation
- Reliability fundamentals
- Failure coding
- CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System) data quality
- Work order quality
- Maintenance KPIs
- Shutdown preparation
- Maintenance leadership
