Beyond "Work Orders Completed": 4 Maintenance KPIs Your Leadership Team Actually Wants to See.

Picture this: you're in the quarterly business review. It's your turn to present the maintenance department's performance. You pull up your slide, the one you and your planner spent hours preparing. It shows a beautiful, upward-trending bar chart: "Work Orders Completed." You announce a 15% increase in completed work orders over the last quarter. You feel a sense of accomplishment. You and your team have been busting it, closing tickets, putting out fires, keeping the facility running.

And you're met with… a sea of blank stares.

The CFO is looking at their phone. The Director of Operations is frowning, probably thinking about last week’s line-down incident. The CEO asks a polite but pointed question: "That's great, but what was the impact on our operational costs? Did this activity reduce downtime?"

Suddenly, your proudest metric feels hollow. It’s a classic case of activity versus achievement. Completing a thousand work orders is just activity. If 900 of those were for reactive, breakdown maintenance, you're not a hero; you're the leader of a very busy, very expensive fire department. You're working hard, but you're not working smart, and you certainly aren't speaking the language of the leadership team.

For decades, maintenance and facilities teams have been trapped in this cycle. We're seen as a cost center, a necessary evil. Our requests for new tools, more headcount, or that critical CMMS software upgrade are met with skepticism because we fail to connect our daily work to the metrics the C-suite actually cares about: risk, profitability, asset value, and efficiency.

The truth is, "Work Orders Completed" is a vanity metric. It doesn't tell a story of value. To earn a seat at the table, to secure the budget you desperately need, and to transform your department from a cost center into a strategic business partner, you need to start tracking and reporting on KPIs that resonate with executive leadership. It’s about shifting the conversation from "how busy we were" to "how much value we created." Here are four metrics that will actually get their attention.

The Elephant in the Room: Maintenance Cost as a Percentage of Replacement Asset Value (RAV)

This one sounds a bit academic, but stick with it. It’s arguably the most powerful financial metric a maintenance organization can wield. We’ll call it M-Cost/RAV. It’s calculated by taking your total annual maintenance cost—that’s everything: labor, contractors, spare parts, consumables, the whole shebang—and dividing it by the estimated cost to replace your key assets today.

Why is this so important? Because the finance department is used to looking at the book value of an asset, which is an accounting figure based on depreciation. That 20-year-old chiller might have a book value of zero, but we both know that replacing it would cost a cool $1.2 million. The RAV is the real-world number. It represents the capital the company has tied up in the facility. Your job is to be the steward of that capital.

The M-Cost/RAV ratio tells leadership exactly how well you're doing that job. A world-class maintenance organization might see this figure hover around 2-3%. An average, mostly reactive organization might be sitting at 5-6%. A department in a constant state of run-to-failure chaos could see that number climb to 10% or even higher.

When you walk into a budget meeting and say, "Our M-Cost/RAV for the primary production assets is currently at 9%, while the industry benchmark is 4%. We are spending an exorbitant amount on reactive maintenance just to keep this aging equipment alive," you are no longer just asking for money. You are presenting a data-backed business case. You can follow up with, "I believe a targeted capital investment of $500,000 in upgrading these three key machines, combined with a robust preventive maintenance program, can bring our M-Cost/RAV down to 5% within 24 months, saving us $150,000 annually in maintenance spend and reducing our risk of a catastrophic failure."

Now you’re talking their language. You’ve connected your department’s activities directly to capital preservation and operational risk.

Of course, tracking this is next to impossible without the right systems in place. You can't rely on a stack of invoices and a jumble of spreadsheets. Every single cost has to be captured and attributed to a specific asset. When a technician uses three filters and a belt from inventory and spends four hours working on AHU-07, those costs need to be logged against AHU-07. This is where a dedicated CMMS platform, something like MaintainNow, becomes non-negotiable. It does this automatically. The work order becomes the vessel for all cost data—labor hours, spare parts pulled from inventory, outside contractor invoices. The system aggregates this information, allowing you to run a report that shows your M-Cost/RAV for a single asset, a class of assets, or the entire facility. It turns a monumental data-gathering headache into a few clicks, providing the ammunition you need to fight for your budget and prove your worth.

The Leading Indicator of Reliability: Preventive Maintenance Compliance

Let's be brutally honest for a moment. Most maintenance departments that track "PM completion" are kidding themselves. They report that "95% of PMs were completed this month." What this usually means is that of the 100 PMs they managed to get to, they closed out 95 of them in the system. It ignores the 20 PMs that got pushed from last month and the 15 that will be pushed to next month because of some new emergency. It also fails to account for timeliness. A quarterly lubrication route done two months late is not a success; it's a failure that allowed that asset to operate outside its ideal parameters, inviting wear and tear.

This is why leadership teams don't trust PM completion rates. They see the report that says PMs are getting done, but they also see the report on unplanned downtime, and the two don't line up.

The metric that matters is Preventive Maintenance Compliance (PMC). This measures the percentage of scheduled preventive maintenance tasks that are completed within the specified time window. The industry standard is typically +/- 10% of the maintenance interval. So, a monthly (30-day) PM should be completed within a 6-day window (3 days before to 3 days after its due date). A weekly PM has less than a day and a half of wiggle room.

Why is this so much better? Because it measures discipline and control. A high PMC score (consistently above 90%) is a leading indicator of future reliability. It demonstrates that your team is in proactive control of its workload, not being controlled by a constant stream of reactive breakdowns. It tells leadership that you are systematically executing a plan to mitigate risk. When you can show a chart where your PMC is steadily rising and another chart where unplanned equipment downtime is steadily falling, you have drawn a direct, undeniable line between your team’s proactive efforts and the operational stability of the entire organization.

Achieving high PMC is a cultural and systemic challenge. It's often a symptom of low "wrench time"—the actual time technicians spend performing hands-on maintenance. If your techs are spending their days running down paperwork, searching for spare parts, or getting pulled from a PM to go fix the same pump that failed last week, your PMC will suffer. It's a vicious cycle: reactive work kills proactive work, which in turn creates more reactive work.

Breaking this cycle requires a powerful tool for scheduling, dispatching, and tracking. A modern CMMS is the brain of a successful PM program. It's what generates the work orders automatically, assigns them based on skill and availability, and provides the visibility needed to manage the whole process. More than just a calendar, a system like MaintainNow gives you a real-time dashboard view of your compliance. You can see at a glance what's on schedule, what's at risk of being late, and what's already overdue. You can also stratify by asset criticality. It's far more important to have 100% PMC on your main switchgear and fire pumps than on the breakroom ice machine. The system allows you to prioritize effectively.

Furthermore, putting the right information in the hands of the technicians is critical. The MaintainNow mobile app (accessible at app.maintainnow.app) puts the entire schedule, work order details, asset history, and required spare parts list in the technician's hand. No more trips back to the shop for a forgotten manual or a work order printout. This simple act of arming your techs with information dramatically increases wrench time and makes achieving high PMC a realistic goal, not a far-off dream.

The True Measure of Success: Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)

If you could only track one pure reliability metric, this might be it. Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) measures the average elapsed operating time between one failure of a piece of equipment and the next. It’s simple: a higher MTBF is better. It means your assets are running longer without breaking down. While M-Cost/RAV speaks to finance and PMC speaks to operational discipline, MTBF speaks directly to the core mission of maintenance: making things reliable.

For a manufacturing facility, MTBF on a critical packaging line directly translates to throughput and revenue. For a hospital, the MTBF of its HVAC and medical gas systems is a matter of patient safety. For a commercial office building, the MTBF of its elevators is a key factor in tenant satisfaction. It’s a metric that transcends the maintenance department and has a tangible impact on the entire business.

Presenting a "Work Orders Completed" chart is meaningless. But presenting a chart that shows the MTBF of your critical chiller units has increased by 300% since you implemented a new predictive maintenance strategy using vibration analysis? That gets nods of approval. It proves your maintenance management strategy is not only being executed but is actually *working*. It's the ultimate proof of ROI for your efforts.

You can't fake this metric. You can't estimate it on the back of a napkin. Tracking MTBF requires rigorous and consistent data collection. Every time an asset fails, a breakdown work order must be created in the system, and the time of failure must be logged accurately. The CMMS software then does the work, calculating the "up" time between that failure event and the previous one for that same asset. Over time, it builds a statistically relevant average. Trying to do this with a paper-based system or a collection of spreadsheets is a fool's errand. It will crumble under the weight of its own complexity and inaccuracy.

This is where the power of an integrated CMMS truly shines. It’s not just about logging the data; it’s about using it to make better decisions. Modern CMMS software isn't just a digital logbook; systems like MaintainNow are analytical engines. They can visualize MTBF trends over time, by asset class, by manufacturer, or even by failure mode.

Did switching to that premium synthetic lubricant on your gearboxes actually improve their reliability? Compare the MTBF before and after the change. Did the alignment training you sent your technicians to pay off? Look at the MTBF for your pump and motor assets. The data provides the answer. This allows you to fine-tune your entire preventive maintenance program. You can stop doing PMs that have no effect on reliability and double down on the ones that do. You are no longer just guessing; you are engineering reliability based on hard data from your own facility.

The Hidden Profit Center: Spare Parts Inventory Turns & Stockout Rate

The parts storeroom is often the forgotten corner of the maintenance world. For many organizations, it’s a black hole of capital. You have the classic dilemma: tie up too much cash in spare parts inventory, and the CFO gets nervous. Keep the inventory too lean, and you risk a critical asset being down for days while you wait for a part to be shipped overnight at an exorbitant cost. It’s a constant, stressful balancing act.

Leadership understands this balancing act because it’s pure dollars and cents. Showing them that you are actively and intelligently managing this aspect of the business demonstrates a level of financial acumen they don't often associate with maintenance departments. Two key KPIs tell this story perfectly: Inventory Turns and Stockout Rate.

Inventory Turns measures how many times your parts inventory is used and replaced over a period (usually a year). A very low turn rate (say, less than 1) indicates you are holding onto a lot of dead stock—parts that are gathering dust and tying up cash. A very high turn rate might signal that you're running too lean and are at constant risk of stockouts. The goal is to find the sweet spot, which varies by industry but is a clear indicator of efficiency.

Stockout Rate is even more direct. It’s the percentage of times a technician went to the storeroom for a needed part and found the bin empty. Every stockout is a story of failure. It means a repair is delayed, wrench time is wasted, and equipment downtime is extended. It's a direct hit to productivity and, potentially, revenue.

When you can walk into a review and say, "By optimizing our min/max levels in the CMMS, we increased our inventory turns from 0.8 to 1.5 this year, freeing up $50,000 in working capital by eliminating obsolete stock. At the same time, we reduced our stockout rate on critical spares from 15% to under 2%, which contributed to a 10% reduction in unplanned downtime," you've just turned the maintenance storeroom into a source of value. You've demonstrated that you're not just spending money on parts; you're managing a complex supply chain to support operational goals.

This level of control is impossible without a system that integrates spare parts management with your maintenance workflow. This is where a platform where work orders and inventory talk to each other, like they do in MaintainNow, pays for itself almost immediately. When a work order is generated for a PM on a specific conveyor, the system can automatically reserve the necessary belt and bearings. When the tech completes the job and logs the parts used, they are automatically decremented from inventory. If that brings the quantity of a critical motor below its pre-set minimum level, the system can automatically generate a purchase requisition or send an alert to the storeroom manager.

It closes the loop. It prevents stockouts on the parts you can’t live without and provides the data to identify the parts you can live without. You can run a report to see which parts haven't moved in 24 months. That's your list for potential liquidation or disposal. It transforms the storeroom from a dusty, disorganized liability into a lean, strategic asset that actively supports maintenance efficiency and a healthy asset lifecycle.

It all comes down to changing the conversation. For too long, maintenance has been on the defensive, justifying its existence based on how busy it is. The shift to a proactive, value-driven department requires a new language—the language of data, of finance, of risk management. Metrics like M-Cost/RAV, Preventive Maintenance Compliance, MTBF, and Inventory Turns are the cornerstones of this new language. They reframe the narrative from "maintenance is a cost" to "maintenance is an investment in reliability and asset value."

Of course, tracking and leveraging these KPIs is not a matter of simply wanting to. It requires a fundamental commitment to a data-driven culture, and that culture needs a backbone. It needs a central nervous system that can collect, process, and analyze the vast amounts of data generated by a modern maintenance operation every single day. That is the role of a modern CMMS software solution. It’s the tool that makes this transformation possible, turning the abstract goal of data-driven maintenance into a practical, achievable reality for facility managers and maintenance directors ready to prove their team's true value.