MAINTENANCE

BENCHMARKING
Robert G. Batson
Department of Industrial Engineering
The University of Alabama

MARCON 2000
Knoxville, TN May 10, 2000
OVERVIEW OF TODAY’S
PRESENTATION
 Maintenance Performance Management
 Maintenance Performance Measures
 Benchmarking
• Definitions
• Process
 Maintenance Benchmarking
• What to Measure?
• Information Sources
• Results in the literature
MAINTENANCE PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
 Two processes
• Maintenance Performance
Measurement
• Maintenance Benchmarking
 Basis of comparison is different, but
 Often use identical maintenance
performance measures
MAINTENANCE PERFORMANCE
METRICS--SEVERAL TAXONOMIES

1. Robinson & Ginder “Implementing TPM”

Quantitative vs. Qualitative
2. Robert C. Baldwin “In Search of Maintenance
Excellence”
Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
3. Joel Levitt “Handbook of Maintenance Management”
Costs, Parts, Work Ratios, & Customer Service
4. John D. Campbell “Uptime”
Equipment, Cost, & Process Performance; Processes
to benchmark
FACTS ABOUT MAINTENANCE
METRICS (OR INDICATORS)
 There are literally hundreds of potential indicators
 “Appropriate” indicators depend on many factors,
such as
• Level in the organization to use the information
• Existing data collection systems, and how easily
modified
• Staff availability to develop/maintain systems
• Demands of managers &teams for the information,
and their level of sophistication (foreman vs. MBA)
 Frequency of reporting also is situation dependent
 Stratification options by plant, department, machine,
product line, etc., are important
MAINTENANCE INDICATORS
(Robinson & Ginder)
Macro-indicators (for upper management, primarily)
 maintenance expense dollars as a percent of replacement asset
value
 maintenance expense dollars per unit produced
 maintenance expense dollars as a percent of plant controllable
expenses
 regulatory compliance indicators
Micro-indicators (for lower levels of management)
 maintenance budget compliance (budget vs. expense)
 monthly expense dollars (by equipment type)
 percent overtime (3-9% sometimes cited as ideal)
 percent emergency work
MAINTENANCE INDICATORS
(Robinson & Ginder)
Micro-indicators (continued)
 number of call-ins
 equipment availability (uptime)
 overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
 training hours (or dollars) per maintenance employee
 percent rework (repeat maintenance)
 materials/labor ratio
 labor-hours/completed work order
 mean time between failure (MTBF)
 percent planned work
 percent schedule attainment
 backlog levels (5-10 days is considered ideal)
 PM accomplishments
 work orders generated per PM activity
MAINTENANCE INDICATORS
(Robinson & Ginder)

Maintenance parts inventory indicators

 inventory value and trends
 number of inventory line items and trends
 percent stockouts
 percent inactive or obsolete inventory
 value as a percent of replacement asset
value
 turns per year
 inventory accuracy
BENCHMARKING DEFINITIONS
Formal Definition
Benchmarking is the continuous, systematic process of measuring
our products, services, and practices against the toughest
competitors or those companies recognized as industry leaders.
Working Definition
Benchmarking is a basis of establishing rational performance
goals through the search for best industry practices that will lead
to superior performance.
A Related Definition
Benchmark: An industry standard
 Descriptive Benchmarks or Practices
 Quantitative Benchmarks or Performance Measurements
BENCHMARKS

Descriptive Benchmarks or Practices

Any work process is made up of an input, repeatable
process based on a method or practice, and an
output. The practices deliver the output. If the
practices are the best in the industry they will most
fully satisfy customers.
Quantitative Benchmarks or Performance
Measurements
Benchmark metrics are the conversion of benchmark
practices to operational measures.
BENCHMARKING AND CHANGE
MANAGEMENT
Key Factors for Successful Change
 Belief that there is a need for change
 A determination of what you want to change
 Development of a picture of what you want to look like afterward

How Benchmarking Makes Change Successful

 The gap between internal and external practices creates the
need for change
 Understanding industry best practices identifies what you must
change
 Externally benchmarked practices developed from others give a
picture of the endpoint after change
GENERIC BENCHMARKING
PROCESS
BENCHMARKING PROCESS

BENCHMARK METRICS BENCHMARK PRACTICES

BENCHMARK GAP HOW TO CLOSE THE GAP

 HOW MUCH  IMPROVED KNOWLEDGE
 WHERE  IMPROVE PRACTICES
 WHEN  IMPROVED PROCESSES

MANAGEMENT
COMMITMENT

ORGANIZATION
COMMUNICATION

EMPLOYEE
PARTICIPATION

SUPERIOR
PERFORMANCE
BENCHMARKING PROCESS
STEPS
1. IDENTIFY WHAT IS TO BE BENCHMARKED

PLANNING 2. IDENTIFY COMPARATIVE COMPANIES

3. DETERMINE DATA COLLECTION METHOD AND

COLLECT DATA

4. DETERMINE CURRENT PERFORMANCE “GAP”

ANALYSIS
5. PROJECT FUTURE PERFORMANCE LEVELS

6. COMMUNICATE BENCHMARK FINDINGS AND GAIN

ACCEPTANCE
INTEGRATION
7. ESTABLISH FUNCTIONAL GOALS

8. DEVELOP ACTION PLANS

ACTION
9. IMPLEMENT SPECIFIC ACTIONS AND MONITOR
PROGRESS

10. RECALIBRATE BENCHMARKS

MATURITY  LEADERSHIP POSITION ATTAINED

 PRACTICES FULLY INTEGRATED INTO PROCESSES
MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING:
BASIC PHILOSOPHY

 Know your own operation, both its strengths and

weaknesses
 Know those industries that excel at the maintenance
processes used in your operation, including
competitors, sector leaders, and those in other
industries
 Set challenging targets for your maintenance
performance measures; incorporate the best
practices
 Measure results and strive continually for superior
performance
MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING:
INFORMATION SOURCES
“In building formal benchmarking and networking relationships, a
key challenge is to find appropriate willing partners.”
 Two professional societies provide a variety of benchmarking
services to maintenance departments:
• Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals
(SMRP)
• American Institute for Total Productive Maintenance (AITPM)
 Attendance at trade shows and maintenance conferences will
often lead to contacts with potential partners
 Maintenance consulting firms may play the role of “matchmaker”
for their clients desiring partners
MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING:
WHAT TO MEASURE?
QUANTITATIVE
 Performance metrics like those already discussed
 Typically needs to be done within the same industry
 Clear groundrules, assumptions, formulas must be documented
and adhered to
QUALITATIVE
 Processes, procedures, practices
 Linkage to performance metrics is important, if an organization
wants to forecast benefit of a proposed change…but
 Correctly adopting best practices should automatically drive
improved performance
 Process gaps are often not discovered because it is more
cumbersome and laborious to identify them than to simply look
at graphs of performance
MAINTENANCE PROCESS
BENCHMARKING: WHAT TO MEASURE?
Robinson & Ginder 22 processes, procedures, practices
 Maintenance planning and  improvement strategies
scheduling techniques and
 participative management or self-
procedures
managing team concepts
 use of computerized maintenance
 Operator performance of minor
management systems
maintenance
 work order flows or processing
 problem-solving methodologies
 preventive maintenance procedures
 bar coding
(for specific types of equipment)
 parts receipt
 predictive maintenance procedures
(specific technologies for specific  use of blanket agreements
equipment)  cycle counting techniques
 training methodologies  vendor stocking program (VSP)
 concurrent engineering techniques  electronic data interchange (EDI)
 organizational alignments or  use of mini or satellite stores
structures  parts staging and delivery methods
 roles and responsibilities  tool management
MAINTENANCE PROCESS
BENCHMARKING: WHAT TO MEASURE?

Levitt “Maintenance Fitness Audit” (Managing Factory

Maintenance, 1996)
A. Initiation and Authorization of Work (9 questions)
B. Systems and Procedures (12 questions)
C. CMMS and other Information Systems (11 questions)
D. Preventive and Predictive Maintenance (17 questions)
E. Planning, Scheduling, and Follow-up (10 questions)
F. Purchasing, Parts, Stores, (14 questions)
G. Budgeting, Backlog, Maintenance Ratios, and Work
Measurement (14 questions)
H. Guaranteed Maintainability (4 questions)
I. Training, Hiring, and Employee Development (8 questions)
MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING:
SOME RESULTS
 Robinson and Ginder: “The rapid growth of TPM in North
America in recent years owes much to the emphasis on
benchmarking…management sought out companies that had
achieved major gains in improving equipment reliability and
controlling maintenance costs. Their searches led them more
and more frequently to plants that had implemented TPM or its
variations.”
 Eugene C. Wordehoff, A.T. Kearney, has published several
excellent articles on maintenance benchmarking in Plant
Engineering Magazine.
 Building and facility managers can obtain published benchmarks
from R.S. Means Maintenance Cost Data Handbook to the
Whitestone Building Maintenance and Repair Cost Reference.
MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING
EXAMPLES
Campbell, Uptime, pp.80-86
 A mining company benchmarked an airline’s jet engine rebuild
shop to improve its truck engine overhaul practice
 A European microelectronics company manufacturing computer
chips benchmarked similar process lines in Japan, and found
reliability to be 200 hours--8.33 times its reliability
 E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. has been benchmarking
maintenance performance since 1987 -- 65 plants involved, as
well as competitors and aspects of other industries
 International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) benchmarked 17 of its
members and came up with five “best practices.”
MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING
EXAMPLES
Robinson and Ginder, Implementing TPM, pp. 164-169

 Choosing the Benchmarking Team, pp. 165-166

 A refinery organized its plants in quartiles, with a first quartile
ranking indicating superior performance. A fourth quartile
refinery arranged a three-day trip to a first quartile refinery. It
was discovered that both plants were using the same or similar
practices, but the trip did not permit the fourth quartile team to
understand the differences in execution, pp. 165-166.
 Most intercompany networking falls short of potential…only
intensive time on-site will reveal the subtleties of how a
company really goes about its business, pp. 167-169.