In our previous Actionable Insights blog, we discussed the Inventory Expired and Expiring Action Center. Next, we will provide an overview of the Preventative Maintenance Compliance Action Center as well as the associated key performance indicators (KPIs).
Keeping equipment operating at peak efficiency is crucial for effective manufacturing operations, but in the heat of the day-to-day drive to get production orders completed to fulfill critical customer needs, it can be tempting to postpone or even skip required preventive maintenance (PM) altogether. Postponing PMs for a few hours or days may not cause problems, but if it becomes a way of life, it can have profound effects on productivity, schedule compliance and costs.
The potential for these longer term effects make it extremely important to track compliance with scheduled PMs and monitor the volume of corrective maintenance, but with many ERP or asset management systems, doing socan require hours of manual analysis. With QAD Adaptive ERP and its Preventive Maintenance Compliance Action Center, tracking this important and useful metric becomes simple. Managers can easily keep tabs on the quality and performance of its PM program. It may also function as an early warning system that equipment is nearing the end of its useful life because increased corrective (unplanned) maintenance makes the equipment no longer cost-effective.
KPIs on the Preventative Maintenance Compliance Action Center
QAD Action Centers provide analytics to help both managers and users monitor metrics and KPIs. KPI highlights for the Preventative Maintenance Compliance Action Center include:
Total CM PM Ratio Percentage
This visual shows the percentages of preventive maintenance (PM) and corrective maintenance (CM) over time. A high ratio of PMs to CMs is a strong indicator that the preventive maintenance program is working well. It indicates that the maintenance team is proactively scheduling required maintenance rather than waiting for machines to break down, which causes disruptive unplanned downtime.
Total CM PM Ratio per Year
This bar chart visual shows the total number of maintenance work orders by year and shows the ratio of PM to CM work orders. This helps identify trends in maintenance so you can monitor the maintenance program to ensure they are improving over time or at least, maintaining acceptable levels of maintenance. A trend toward increasing CMs over PMs may indicate that both production management and the maintenance team are ignoring maintenance schedules at the cost of more unplanned downtime.
Unplanned or corrective maintenance is usually more expensive to perform because required parts or materials may not be on hand, necessitating rush purchasing or priority shipping. In addition, the unplanned downtime adversely affects schedules, which may require overtime to correct—or worse yet—result in late shipments, unhappy customers, and lost revenue.
Planned vs Unplanned Work Orders by Year
Similar to the Total CM PM Ratio per Year Action Center, this bar chart shows the total number of work orders on an annual basis and shows the ratio of planned to unplanned work orders. While people often assume corrective maintenance is unplanned, this may not always be the case. For example, the maintenance team might uncover the unexpected need to replace components during a routine preventive maintenance cycle. If it’s not an emergency, they can obtain the required components and schedule the CM at a time that makes sense for production without jeopardizing the equipment.
When the maintenance team creates a CM order, they can mark it as planned, so the system can accurately measure work that is truly unplanned compared to planned work. This can help management measure the effectiveness of the maintenance team, while also gaining insight into their proactive response to correcting potential problems before they become disruptive. Most ERP systems do not provide the ability to mark maintenance work orders as planned or unplanned, so this ability within QAD Adaptive ERP provides users an edge over competitors that may very possibly suffer more unplanned downtime.
The Importance of the Preventative Maintenance Compliance Action Center
It can be tempting to postpone or even skip preventive maintenance entirely, but the ability to distinguish and measure PM versus CM and planned versus unplanned maintenance orders provides insight that can help management understand the true impact of the decision to delay maintenance. The ability to see performance year by year also helps management understand whether the production and maintenance teams are improving their performance.
Unlike QAD Adaptive ERP, very few ERP systems take a proactive approach to monitoring PM and CM work orders separately, and even fewer enable the team to mark them as planned or unplanned. Lumping all maintenance orders into a single bucket disincentivizes the maintenance team from ensuring that all PMs are done as required and prevents management from getting a clear view into the efficacy of the company’s maintenance program. Lack of visibility increases the likelihood of customer dissatisfaction due to late deliveries and increases production costs due to poor equipment efficiency. Companies that use QAD Adaptive ERP can avoid the issues caused by poor PM schedule adherence and help keep costs low and quality and customer satisfaction high.
Which KPIs and metrics are most important to your organization? Learn more about QAD’s predefined and highly customizable Action Centers as well as best practices for each.
