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Articles: KPIs - Reliability Performance Metrics
2 Minute Audio Tip - Mean Time to Restore
Take 2 minutes to hear what Ricky Smith, CMRP of GPAllied has to say about Mean Time to Restore as a preformance metric.
APEX™ - Benchmarking Performance Culture
A typical Monday staff meeting; the coffee is cold and someone is droning on about how important it is to improve operations. Productivity is drooping and the charts on the wall look terrible. A benchmarking study is suggested and all agree that knowing where you stand relative to your competition is a great idea. You get assigned the task of pulling the numbers together for the comparative study. The meeting adjourns; you trek back to your office wondering where you will get the required data.
Backlog Management
Fundamentals of Maintenance Planning Series
By Daryl Mather
Few tools are as useful to managing the maintenance workload and effectiveness as the Maintenance Backlog. In many companies today management of the maintenance backlog has been neglected. As a result they are generally drowning in their own data. A poorly managed system has a dramatic effect on the entire delivery of maintenance services.
Benchmarking a Better Understanding
Benchmarks Shed Light on Maintenance & Reliability Perceptions
by Klaus M. Blache, PhD
This interesting study compares data collected in 2008 to data collected in 1991 to chart the trends in reliability and maintenance over the last 17 years.
Closing the Perception Gap
Nearly every manufacturing company uses key performance metrics (KPIs), but few manufacturers really understand how these metrics relate to each other. Understanding the interactions between metrics and their associated effects can lead to a better understanding of what drives sustainable improvement. Most of the time, plants and companies sense that there is room for improvement, but determining a set of actionable diagnostic metrics is more elusive. What is a reasonable expectation for the improvement effort? Operational silos, confidentiality, competitive advantage strategies, and differing manufacturing approaches cause manufacturing professionals to resist looking outside their own plant for additional insight.
Do Not Be Misled by O.E.E.
Measure of Equipment Effectiveness Often Misused
By Robert M. Williamson, president of Strategic Work Systems
Overall equipment effectiveness (O.E.E.) has been used as one of the more important "maintenance metrics" since Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) came to the U.S. in the late 1980s. O.E.E. is the primary measure used in TPM to identify and quantify the major equipment-related losses and a metric for rating "equipment effectiveness." O.E.E. has become widely used in many plants with or without the elements of TPM in place since the early years of TPM to quantify equipment effectiveness losses. This usage has also caused some confusion and has led to many misuses of the O.E.E. percentage calculation.
How High, How Far and How Fast —Assess Your Organization
What improvements is your organization pursuing? It is likely that your management has spent a lot of time reviewing best practices and evaluating which ones can provide the needed performance improvements. But has any effort been expended to determine which of these best practices are "doable" within your organization?
Measuring Maintenance Performance - The Puzzle
Don't expect good results from bad practices
Guess: What is the value of backlog?
By Tarek Atout
The maintenance manager in a manufacturing organization asked two different maintenance supervisors to report on the work orders backlog up to the current date. The two supervisors reported two different values for the backlog, while both seemed to use the same data sources to produce the report.
Measuring plant performance - The need for metrics standardization
By: Walter Nijsen
Asst. Maintenance and Reliability Leader
Cargill Grain and Oilseeds Europe
Understanding how our plants perform and how well we perform in relation to others often reveals opportunities for improvement, at least in principle. The key question first raised is often “Are we comparing apples with apples?” If not (as in many cases), the whole exercise of comparison and to some extend measurement becomes somewhat (or completely) meaningless.
On top of that, a question that really should be answered first is WHY should we measure? Along with, WHAT should be measured and HOW?
More Than Math - Key Performance Indicators Are Not Just Mathematical Equations
by Tarek Atout
When I decided to write about KPI's, I wanted to see this famous terminology "Key Performance Indicators" from a different prospective. This article will not focus on what KPI's need to be measured in a maintenance organization nor what best practices values are expected, but will discuss how to motivate the principle itself and how to manage the process of developing, measuring, analyzing results and correcting the maintenance process path to achieve the required targets.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness Podcast
OEE Podcast: Join Terrence O'Hanlon, CMRP, Publisher of Reliabilityweb.com and Uptime Magazine and John Oskin, Vice President Informance International in a 12 minute Audio Podcast about using Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) as a metric and tool to track and support process improvements.
Research Brings Results - Defining Mean Time Between Pump Failures
by Heinz P. Bloch, PE
In September 2008, we were contacted by a Mechanical Engineering student. He was close to completing an internship with a major U.S. oil refinery and had been asked to set up a system allowing the refinery to monitor its pump mean-time-between-failures (MTBF).
Thank you for participating in our study
Thank you for participating in our study.
The Onesteel Eight Critical Elements of Asset Management
by Mark Brunner, Reliability and Systems Superintendant-Wire, OneSteel Rod Bar and Wire, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
OneSteel is a fully integrated, global manufacturer and distributor of steel and finished steel products, self-sufficient in both iron ore and scrap metal, with revenues in excess of $6 billion Australian dollars. They have major manufacturing facilities across Australia as well facilities in New Zealand, Asia and the Pacific and the USA.

- Integrating Your CBM Just Makes Sense
- Belt/Sheave Alignment Laser, Custom Shim and Gaskets
- Total Productive Maintenance Books
- The One-Stop Source for Lubricants & Reliability Solutions
- MRO Inventory and Purchasing Books
- Reliability Engineering Services
- Commtest - Affordable Vibration Analysis
- IR Windows: Compare and Save with Exiscan
- Become an Aladon Certified RCM2 Facilitator
- New AT33IND Perfect for QC & Troubleshooting
- Request Your Des-Case Complimentary Breather Now
- R300S for When Good Enough – Isn’t Enough!
- Join The Association For Maintenance Professionals
- GPAllied Inspired Training: Hard-Hitting, Impactful Courses and Workshops.
- Motor Testing Books
- “Free eBook Download on Effective Problem Solving”
- Reliability Centered Maintenance for SAP Plant Maintenance
- Job Postings for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals


- Alignment and Balancing
- Asset Management
- CMMS and EAM
- Green Reliability
- Human Asset Management
- Infrared Thermal Imaging
- KPIs - Reliability Performance Metrics
- Lean Maintenance
- Lubrication
- Maintenance Management
- Motor and Power System Testing
- MRO - Spares Management
- Oil and Fluid Analysis
- Planning and Scheduling
- PM Optimization
- Predictive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring Management
- Reliability-Centered Maintenance
- Reliability Engineering
- Reliability Leadership
- Root Cause Analysis
- Shutdowns and Turnarounds
- Total Productive Maintenance (Asset Care)
- Training
- Ultrasonics
- Vibration Analysis

