All Member Open Forum

Hi Terry,

In your experience, how do you ensure that Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) initiatives are truly data-driven and not just a rebranding of time-based maintenance?

Specifically, which KPIs or decision criteria do you use to validate that PM tasks, frequencies, and material usage are effectively aligned with actual failure data?

Greetings Luis,

From an RE perspective developing a maintenance strategy is crucial for asset reliability. Many companies over look the value. My first check is to look at how reactive vs. proactive. I also compare existing KPI's with my own investigation. This identifies the existing conditions.
Your comment on data driven requires investigation of maintenance records, how accurate and consistent. Are all assets listed in detail? With complete bill of materials. Is there a CMMS? What is the PM completion percentage? The CMMS is like a filing cabinet; if it's all in order or all not in order determines the amount of work required. Good record keeping is crucial for accurate PMO evaluation. Hopefully there are work order types: breakdown/reactive, corrective, and preventive/predictive. And captured accurate labor hours and materials used on the asset. To ensure a good PMO rebuild, all costs need identified and compared to the existing PM. So looking from a 50k foot level; good procedures and records are necessary and requires discipline. Of which why responded to the MTTR discussion as it is one factor in labor and material capturing. From this short explanation, do any thoughts arise? This is a topic, at least in my mind, from which at least 11 Reliability Engineering Processes can be examined to achieve reliability excellence. 

Terry

Hi Terry,

In your experience, how do you ensure that Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) initiatives are truly data-driven and not just a rebranding of time-based maintenance?

Specifically, which KPIs or decision criteria do you use to validate that PM tasks, frequencies, and material usage are effectively aligned with actual failure data?

This is a great discussion, and I agree that PMO only delivers real value when it is anchored in how assets actually fail, not how often we assume they might.

One limitation I've seen, even in organizations with disciplined CMMS use and solid KPIs, is the quality of pre-failure observations. If early condition changes lack context or consistency, downstream analysis may be technically correct but operationally shallow.

When condition evidence is captured before functional failure, those points effectively map a failure timeline. That allows PM work to align with how degradation actually progresses, rather than relying primarily on calendar or usage assumptions. This is where PMO moves beyond interval tuning and becomes true failure-mode alignment.

From a reliability perspective, that also reinforces PMO as a learning process, not a one-time optimization exercise. Curious how others have improved the consistency and fidelity of early condition data, since that often seems to be the limiting factor in practice.

Greetings Luis,

From an RE perspective developing a maintenance strategy is crucial for asset reliability. Many companies over look the value. My first check is to look at how reactive vs. proactive. I also compare existing KPI's with my own investigation. This identifies the existing conditions.
Your comment on data driven requires investigation of maintenance records, how accurate and consistent. Are all assets listed in detail? With complete bill of materials. Is there a CMMS? What is the PM completion percentage? The CMMS is like a filing cabinet; if it's all in order or all not in order determines the amount of work required. Good record keeping is crucial for accurate PMO evaluation. Hopefully there are work order types: breakdown/reactive, corrective, and preventive/predictive. And captured accurate labor hours and materials used on the asset. To ensure a good PMO rebuild, all costs need identified and compared to the existing PM. So looking from a 50k foot level; good procedures and records are necessary and requires discipline. Of which why responded to the MTTR discussion as it is one factor in labor and material capturing. From this short explanation, do any thoughts arise? This is a topic, at least in my mind, from which at least 11 Reliability Engineering Processes can be examined to achieve reliability excellence. 

Terry

Hi Terry,

In your experience, how do you ensure that Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) initiatives are truly data-driven and not just a rebranding of time-based maintenance?

Specifically, which KPIs or decision criteria do you use to validate that PM tasks, frequencies, and material usage are effectively aligned with actual failure data?

This is a really insightful perspective,@Nick Bell. As someone that isn't a practioner like most of the group, this is the million dollar question I hear most often.

In most cases, the production side of the house either isn't capturing data or has poor data practices/quality. Even in the instance where the reliability team has quality condition data, wouldn't it only paint half of the picture without contextual performance data from operations? Or am I thinking about it wrong? 

This is a great discussion, and I agree that PMO only delivers real value when it is anchored in how assets actually fail, not how often we assume they might.

One limitation I've seen, even in organizations with disciplined CMMS use and solid KPIs, is the quality of pre-failure observations. If early condition changes lack context or consistency, downstream analysis may be technically correct but operationally shallow.

When condition evidence is captured before functional failure, those points effectively map a failure timeline. That allows PM work to align with how degradation actually progresses, rather than relying primarily on calendar or usage assumptions. This is where PMO moves beyond interval tuning and becomes true failure-mode alignment.

From a reliability perspective, that also reinforces PMO as a learning process, not a one-time optimization exercise. Curious how others have improved the consistency and fidelity of early condition data, since that often seems to be the limiting factor in practice.

Greetings Luis,

From an RE perspective developing a maintenance strategy is crucial for asset reliability. Many companies over look the value. My first check is to look at how reactive vs. proactive. I also compare existing KPI's with my own investigation. This identifies the existing conditions.
Your comment on data driven requires investigation of maintenance records, how accurate and consistent. Are all assets listed in detail? With complete bill of materials. Is there a CMMS? What is the PM completion percentage? The CMMS is like a filing cabinet; if it's all in order or all not in order determines the amount of work required. Good record keeping is crucial for accurate PMO evaluation. Hopefully there are work order types: breakdown/reactive, corrective, and preventive/predictive. And captured accurate labor hours and materials used on the asset. To ensure a good PMO rebuild, all costs need identified and compared to the existing PM. So looking from a 50k foot level; good procedures and records are necessary and requires discipline. Of which why responded to the MTTR discussion as it is one factor in labor and material capturing. From this short explanation, do any thoughts arise? This is a topic, at least in my mind, from which at least 11 Reliability Engineering Processes can be examined to achieve reliability excellence. 

Terry

This is a really insightful perspective,@Nick Bell. As someone that isn't a practioner like most of the group, this is the million dollar question I hear most often.

In most cases, the production side of the house either isn't capturing data or has poor data practices/quality. Even in the instance where the reliability team has quality condition data, wouldn't it only paint half of the picture without contextual performance data from operations? Or am I thinking about it wrong? 

This is a great discussion, and I agree that PMO only delivers real value when it is anchored in how assets actually fail, not how often we assume they might.

One limitation I've seen, even in organizations with disciplined CMMS use and solid KPIs, is the quality of pre-failure observations. If early condition changes lack context or consistency, downstream analysis may be technically correct but operationally shallow.

When condition evidence is captured before functional failure, those points effectively map a failure timeline. That allows PM work to align with how degradation actually progresses, rather than relying primarily on calendar or usage assumptions. This is where PMO moves beyond interval tuning and becomes true failure-mode alignment.

From a reliability perspective, that also reinforces PMO as a learning process, not a one-time optimization exercise. Curious how others have improved the consistency and fidelity of early condition data, since that often seems to be the limiting factor in practice.

Greetings Luis,

From an RE perspective developing a maintenance strategy is crucial for asset reliability. Many companies over look the value. My first check is to look at how reactive vs. proactive. I also compare existing KPI's with my own investigation. This identifies the existing conditions.
Your comment on data driven requires investigation of maintenance records, how accurate and consistent. Are all assets listed in detail? With complete bill of materials. Is there a CMMS? What is the PM completion percentage? The CMMS is like a filing cabinet; if it's all in order or all not in order determines the amount of work required. Good record keeping is crucial for accurate PMO evaluation. Hopefully there are work order types: breakdown/reactive, corrective, and preventive/predictive. And captured accurate labor hours and materials used on the asset. To ensure a good PMO rebuild, all costs need identified and compared to the existing PM. So looking from a 50k foot level; good procedures and records are necessary and requires discipline. Of which why responded to the MTTR discussion as it is one factor in labor and material capturing. From this short explanation, do any thoughts arise? This is a topic, at least in my mind, from which at least 11 Reliability Engineering Processes can be examined to achieve reliability excellence. 

Terry

Hi Terry,

In your experience, how do you ensure that Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) initiatives are truly data-driven and not just a rebranding of time-based maintenance?

Specifically, which KPIs or decision criteria do you use to validate that PM tasks, frequencies, and material usage are effectively aligned with actual failure data?

Computerized Maintenance Management System CMMS optimization and a relationship to PMO

A CMMS has been associated to "solving all maintenance problems", but in reality, a CMMS is only as good as the maintenance organization uses it. I like to compare it to file cabinet organization, being, both are only as good as how they are built, organized, used and maintained. Having a best-in-class CMMS is a "living document or requirement", to capture and maintain all asset data. All too often CMMS's are designed for accounting purposes and not for maximum maintenance/asset optimization.

In reality, the best CMMS is a "one stop shop" for all the information the maintenance organization needs for quick and efficient asset information location, leading to best-in-practice asset reliability. Listed is a small snapshot with my real time experience challenges.

1. Who is the "Gatekeeper" and are there written standards for specified CMMS use including rules for specific job positions whom interact with the CMMS? If new personnel interact with the CMMS, will they make damaging changes as to what they think or like; Or will they be required to follow the specified standard and rules. Can it last the test of time and personnel? Is a Reliability Engineer the Gatekeeper?
2. Are all the assets listed in detail? Including all asset nameplate information and exact location the asset is located? Is all activity on an asset captured in the CMMS? As a leader, the first place I would go when I needed to review, order parts, look at failures and examine actual to KPI performance, PMO etc. was the CMMS. Also if you are informed of a failure, are you required to waste time to travel to find the nameplate data and was the asset easily located to find, vs. instantly finding the information in the CMMS?
3. What is your maintenance strategy for your CMMS? What is your frequency of CMMS review/refresh? What is your most to least important/critical asset and how do you build your Bill of Materials (BOM), manage of change (MOC)? Are you capturing your transition to Predictive Maintenance? As a planner I needed to know most to least importance of assets so I could correctly apply the Ranking Index for Maintenance Expenditures (RIME) methodology for work order planning and scheduling. I also quickly needed to find parts on the asset and to what vendor.
4. Is your CMMS a part of your EAM to enable work order building directly to the asset, including requisitioning parts through the work order directly to the asset? As a planner I could capture and improve all my planning work directly to the asset; including shopping in the BOM for parts, stock and non-stock, making repeat work order creation/ordering a breeze. And capturing all parts, labor and material movements for total cost to the asset.

At this point, I hope you can see the importance of CMMS data accuracy and strategy. And how this can make real time PMO optimization a reality.

    In this discussion we only touched the tip of the iceberg and the importance of a Best-In- Class/Practice CMMS. 

Thoughts?

This was a great read for me.  It has allowed me to make some good observations & ask myself some questions on how we are developing as a team within our organization. I believe our CMMS, being a small part of our overall ERP, has presented us with some limitations but were pursuing all avenues of improvement in most of the topics you described .  We capture much adjustment / process activity on our production monitoring system we just installed but I have not managed to use that data in depth yet.  The work order system is getting smoother & the numbers prove that out however the parts & expenditure part of the process is large void currently.  I still rely primarily  on the technician feedback provided from said work order & manual data processing is difficult.  I am the gatekeeper of this system & have a long history on technical side but have come to realize that i'm a novice on the administrative side .  Currently I'm building a review of critical assets & how vibration analysis might fit in with the overall strategy so we have a better understanding of when things go into decline & address them sooner.  I check some of the boxes on this list but theres plenty for me to look at .  Thanks for this list !

Computerized Maintenance Management System CMMS optimization and a relationship to PMO

A CMMS has been associated to "solving all maintenance problems", but in reality, a CMMS is only as good as the maintenance organization uses it. I like to compare it to file cabinet organization, being, both are only as good as how they are built, organized, used and maintained. Having a best-in-class CMMS is a "living document or requirement", to capture and maintain all asset data. All too often CMMS's are designed for accounting purposes and not for maximum maintenance/asset optimization.

In reality, the best CMMS is a "one stop shop" for all the information the maintenance organization needs for quick and efficient asset information location, leading to best-in-practice asset reliability. Listed is a small snapshot with my real time experience challenges.

1. Who is the "Gatekeeper" and are there written standards for specified CMMS use including rules for specific job positions whom interact with the CMMS? If new personnel interact with the CMMS, will they make damaging changes as to what they think or like; Or will they be required to follow the specified standard and rules. Can it last the test of time and personnel? Is a Reliability Engineer the Gatekeeper?
2. Are all the assets listed in detail? Including all asset nameplate information and exact location the asset is located? Is all activity on an asset captured in the CMMS? As a leader, the first place I would go when I needed to review, order parts, look at failures and examine actual to KPI performance, PMO etc. was the CMMS. Also if you are informed of a failure, are you required to waste time to travel to find the nameplate data and was the asset easily located to find, vs. instantly finding the information in the CMMS?
3. What is your maintenance strategy for your CMMS? What is your frequency of CMMS review/refresh? What is your most to least important/critical asset and how do you build your Bill of Materials (BOM), manage of change (MOC)? Are you capturing your transition to Predictive Maintenance? As a planner I needed to know most to least importance of assets so I could correctly apply the Ranking Index for Maintenance Expenditures (RIME) methodology for work order planning and scheduling. I also quickly needed to find parts on the asset and to what vendor.
4. Is your CMMS a part of your EAM to enable work order building directly to the asset, including requisitioning parts through the work order directly to the asset? As a planner I could capture and improve all my planning work directly to the asset; including shopping in the BOM for parts, stock and non-stock, making repeat work order creation/ordering a breeze. And capturing all parts, labor and material movements for total cost to the asset.

At this point, I hope you can see the importance of CMMS data accuracy and strategy. And how this can make real time PMO optimization a reality.

    In this discussion we only touched the tip of the iceberg and the importance of a Best-In- Class/Practice CMMS. 

Thoughts?