How healthy is your maintenance strategy?

A critical component of operational excellence is understanding not just that you are doing maintenance, but what kind of maintenance is dominating your schedule.

A strong maintenance program should not be driven mostly by breakdowns. If corrective work is too high, it usually means the plant is spending too much time reacting instead of preventing failures.

One practical way to evaluate it is by looking at the balance between preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance.

If your CM ratio is higher than your PM ratio, your plant is in a "reactive loop," leading to higher emergency costs, unpredictable downtime, and increased safety risks. ​ A simple way to measure this is: Preventive Maintenance Ratio = PM Hours / Total Maintenance Hours × 100 Corrective Maintenance Ratio = CM Hours / Total Maintenance Hours × 100

Total Maintenance Hours = PM + CM

Let take for example: If in one month your team worked: 320 hours in preventive maintenance and 180 hours in corrective maintenance,

Then: PM Ratio = 320 / 500 × 100 = 64%

And

CM Ratio = 180 / 500 × 100 = 36%

That means 64% of the effort went into prevention, while 36% was spent reacting to failures.

A higher preventive ratio is a sign of a more mature maintenance organization. It usually leads to better equipment reliability, fewer unexpected stoppages, improved planning, lower emergency costs and safer working conditions

Tracking these ratios consistently reveals trajectory of your maintenance strategy.

Based on your calculations, what is your PM vs. CM ratio in your plant?

Are you moving toward Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) or are you trapped in a cycle of firefighting? ​ My name is Ekemini Akpaidem, a Preventive Maintenance Advocate and Reliability Strategist.

#Maintenance #Reliability #PreventiveMaintenance #Corrective Maintenance #Assetcare #TPM #Assetmanagement #Manufacturing