Maintenance KPIs and Dashboards: What to Track and How to Report

Maintenance without measurement is guesswork. You may feel that you are busy, but you cannot say whether planned work is being done on time, how long repairs take, or whether the balance of preventive and reactive work is improving. A maintenance dashboard built around the right KPIs turns data into decisions: where to add capacity, which assets to focus on, and how to justify investment in people, parts, and systems. For South African operations, the same KPIs that drive reliability and cost control also support the evidence that inspectors and insurers expect. This article covers why measurement matters, which maintenance KPIs to track, how to build a dashboard that different audiences can use, reporting cadence, common mistakes, and how a CMMS automates the reporting that feeds your dashboard.

Why Measurement Matters

If you do not measure, you cannot improve in a consistent way. Anecdotes (“we had a bad month”) are not enough to decide whether to hire another technician, change PM frequencies, or invest in condition monitoring. You need numbers: how much work was planned vs unplanned, how often assets fail, how long repairs take, and whether PM is being completed on schedule. Those numbers also support compliance. When an inspector asks for evidence of maintenance, a report showing PM compliance by asset or by period is more convincing than a stack of unsigned job cards. A maintenance KPIs dashboard that is fed by real work-order and completion data gives you both operational control and audit-ready evidence.

Essential Maintenance KPIs

No single set of KPIs fits every operation, but the following are widely used and relevant for South African mines, factories, and facilities.

PM Compliance (Planned Maintenance Completion)

What it is: The percentage of planned maintenance work orders completed by their due date (or within a defined grace period, e.g. within 7 days of due).

Why it matters: Low PM compliance means preventive work is slipping; that usually leads to more breakdowns and more reactive work. Improving PM compliance is one of the highest-leverage actions for reducing unplanned downtime.

How to use it: Track overall and by asset criticality or area. Set a target (e.g. 90% on time) and review causes when compliance drops — capacity, prioritisation, parts, or scheduling.

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)

What it is: Total operating time for an asset (or group) divided by the number of failures in that period. Expressed in hours or days.

Why it matters: MTBF shows how often assets fail. Improving MTBF (longer time between failures) indicates better reliability, often through better PM or design changes.

How to use it: Calculate per critical asset or per line. Use failure definitions consistently (e.g. what counts as a “failure” for work-order coding). For a detailed treatment of MTBF and MTTR in the South African context, see our MTBF and MTTR guide.

MTTR (Mean Time To Repair)

What it is: Total repair time (or downtime) divided by the number of repairs. Expressed in hours or minutes.

Why it matters: MTTR measures how quickly you restore an asset after a failure. Shorter MTTR means less downtime per incident. It is driven by diagnostics, procedures, spares availability, and labour.

How to use it: Track by asset or asset type. Compare trends over time and between teams or sites. Use it together with downtime cost to justify investment in spares, training, or better procedures.

Planned vs Unplanned Ratio

What it is: The proportion of work orders (or labour hours) that are planned (preventive, predictive, or scheduled corrective) vs unplanned (emergency, breakdown).

Why it matters: A high share of unplanned work means you are firefighting; reliability is low and costs are high. Shifting toward planned work is a key outcome of a solid PM program. For the strategic view, see preventive vs reactive maintenance.

How to use it: Target 80% or more of work (by hours or count) as planned. Track trend over time and by area.

Backlog (Open Work Orders)

What it is: The count (or hours) of work orders not yet completed, often split by age (e.g. overdue, 1–7 days, 8–30 days, 30+ days).

Why it matters: Backlog shows whether capacity matches demand. A growing backlog means work is piling up; a shrinking one means you are keeping up or catching up. Overdue backlog is a compliance and risk concern.

How to use it: Review backlog size and age regularly. Use it to justify additional capacity or to reprioritise.

Cost per Asset (or per Unit of Output)

What it is: Total maintenance cost (labour, parts, contractors) for a period divided by the number of assets, or by output (e.g. tonnes produced, hours run).

Why it matters: Cost per asset or per unit of output lets you compare areas, sites, or periods and see where maintenance spend is high or trending up.

How to use it: Normalise by asset count or output so comparisons are fair. Drill down when a cost is high to see labour vs parts vs contractors.

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

What it is: Availability × Performance × Quality. Often used for production lines. Availability is the fraction of time the equipment could run that it actually ran; performance and quality capture speed and yield.

Why it matters: OEE combines availability (affected by breakdowns and maintenance) with performance and quality. Maintenance directly influences availability; improving MTBF and MTTR and PM compliance supports higher OEE.

How to use it: Track OEE by line or critical asset. Use it in conversation with production so that maintenance and operations share the same goal.

Building a Dashboard: What Plant Managers Want vs What Technicians Need

Different roles need different views.

Plant or maintenance manager — Wants a high-level view: PM compliance, backlog, planned vs unplanned ratio, MTBF/MTTR for critical assets, cost trends. They use this to prioritise, report up, and justify resources. The dashboard should fit on one screen and refresh daily or in real time.

Planner or supervisor — Needs more detail: which work orders are overdue, which assets have the most open work, labour allocation, and parts usage. They use the dashboard to assign work, chase overdue PM, and manage backlog.

Technicians — Need their own work list and completion status, not the full KPI set. A mobile view of “my work” is more relevant than a plant-wide dashboard.

Board or senior management — Often want a single page: key KPIs (e.g. PM compliance, unplanned downtime, maintenance cost vs budget) with trend and comparison to target. Less detail, more summary.

Design the dashboard so that the right people see the right level. Avoid one massive report that tries to serve everyone; instead, create a manager dashboard, a planner view, and a technician work list, all fed from the same CMMS data.

Reporting Cadence: Daily, Weekly, Monthly

Daily — Backlog count, today’s overdue work, and critical PM due today or this week. Used by planners and supervisors to allocate labour and catch overdue items quickly.

Weekly — PM compliance for the week, new work orders vs completed, backlog trend, and perhaps top five assets by downtime or open work. Used in weekly maintenance or operations meetings to adjust priorities and capacity.

Monthly — Full KPI set: PM compliance, MTBF, MTTR, planned vs unplanned ratio, cost per asset or area, backlog by age. Used for management reporting, trend analysis, and compliance evidence. Monthly is also a good cadence to review whether definitions and targets are still right.

Quarterly or annually — Deeper analysis: reliability trends, cost benchmarking, asset-level review, and alignment with preventive vs reactive strategy. Used for budgeting and strategic decisions.

Common Mistakes: Vanity Metrics, Data Quality, and Not Acting

Vanity metrics — Tracking KPIs that look good but do not drive action. Example: total work orders completed (without distinguishing planned vs unplanned or on-time vs late). Prefer KPIs that link directly to reliability, cost, or compliance and that you can influence.

Poor data quality — KPIs are only as good as the data. If work orders are closed without accurate labour time, or if “failure” is not coded consistently, MTBF and MTTR will be wrong. If PM due dates are moved instead of marking late completion, PM compliance will be inflated. Invest in discipline: complete work orders properly, code correctly, and avoid gaming the numbers.

Not acting on the data — A dashboard that no one uses is wasted. Tie the dashboard to a meeting or review: weekly maintenance meeting, monthly management report, or quarterly business review. Assign owners for each KPI and agree what happens when a target is missed.

How a CMMS Automates Reporting

When work orders, labour, parts, and completion are recorded in a CMMS, the data for your maintenance KPIs dashboard is already there. A good CMMS provides:

• Built-in reports — PM compliance, backlog, labour and cost by asset or period, planned vs unplanned. No need to export to Excel and build formulas from scratch.
• Dashboards — Pre-configured or configurable screens that show key metrics and refresh from live data.
• Scheduled report runs — E-mail or export reports weekly or monthly so that the right people get the numbers without logging in.
• Drill-down — From a KPI (e.g. PM compliance) to the list of work orders that drove it, so you can see which assets or tasks are behind the number.

That automation reduces admin and ensures that the dashboard reflects actual work, not estimates or manual updates. If your data is still in paper job cards or spreadsheets, moving to a CMMS is the first step toward a reliable maintenance KPIs dashboard.

Start Small, Then Expand

You do not need to track every KPI from day one. Begin with two or three that match your biggest pain: for example PM compliance and backlog if planned work is slipping, or MTTR and cost per asset if repair times and spend are the concern. Get the definitions right, ensure data is captured consistently, and use the numbers in one regular meeting. Once that is routine, add the next KPI or the next audience. A small set of well-understood, acted-on metrics beats a large dashboard that nobody uses.

Summary

A maintenance KPIs dashboard turns work-order and completion data into decisions: PM compliance, MTBF, MTTR, planned vs unplanned ratio, backlog, cost per asset, and OEE are among the essential metrics. Build views for the right audience — plant manager, planner, technician — and use a cadence that matches the decision: daily for allocation, weekly for priorities, monthly for management and compliance. Avoid vanity metrics, invest in data quality, and act on what the dashboard shows. A CMMS that captures work and completion automatically feeds the reports and dashboards that make this possible. If you would like to see how Lungisa supports maintenance reporting and KPIs for South African operations, you can explore Lungisa or contact the Skynode team to discuss your requirements.