Scheduled Maintenance Critical Percent

Any company that manufactures goods or runs machinery knows maintenance is a critical part of keeping the production lines running. The larger the organization, the more complex maintenance tasks can be. Most companies manage a mix of preventive and reactive maintenance tasks, with some throwing predictive maintenance into the mix as well.

All of these tasks need to be scheduled to ensure they get completed on a regular basis or in a timely manner. Just like anything else in life, things don’t always go as planned. When maintenance tasks become overdue, it’s important that a company knows how to prioritize those late work orders to minimize problems that might result. Using scheduled maintenance critical percent (SMCP) as a measurement can help organizations prioritize effectively.

Scheduled Maintenance Overview

Let’s begin by reviewing what scheduled maintenance looks like. Essentially, it’s exactly what its name implies: maintenance scheduled at a particular time. 

Scheduled maintenance can include preventive maintenance tasks such as a monthly calibration of a machine or a quarterly lubrication series for a specific piece of equipment. It can also refer to more general inspections that may take place annually of an entire system such as heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment.

If a piece of machinery breaks down on a production line, the scheduling of that repair to be done as soon as possible or during the next shift change is also considered scheduled maintenance.

Whether the task to be completed is planned months ahead or squeezed in as a result of an emergency, once it’s scheduled as a work order, it’s considered scheduled maintenance.

What Is Scheduled Maintenance Critical Percent?

SMCP is one of many measurements a maintenance manager or supervisor can use to help make day-to-day decisions. A wide number of metrics are available today to measure a maintenance team’s performance, which serves as a foundation to continually improve. All companies should strive to find ways to improve uptime and efficiency and increase the lifespan of expensive equipment through good maintenance practices.

SMCP, in particular, helps maintenance managers determine which overdue scheduled maintenance items are a higher priority. This calculation can help organizations reduce risk of failure or more expensive problems down the road by organizing the next most important work orders based on this calculation.

In addition, SMCP can be used to uncover systemically overdue scheduled maintenance items. The maintenance team can take a closer look at the root cause of this problem and work to find a solution to resolve this issue for the long term. 

How to Calculate Scheduled Maintenance Critical Percent

In order to calculate SMCP, maintenance managers will be looking at how many days late a specific scheduled maintenance is in relation to how frequently the task was supposed to be completed. The calculation generates a certain percentage, and these percentages and their associated tasks can be placed in order from the highest to the lowest, with the highest percentages designating the highest priority items.

Let’s work through an SMCP calculation to illustrate how this tool can work on the production flow. Here is the formula:

SMCP = (Number of days late + Number of days in the PM cycle) / Numbers of days in the PM cycle. This number is then multiplied by 100 to achieve a percentage.

If one scheduled maintenance task is two days late on a 30-day schedule while a second scheduled maintenance task is four days late on a 120-day schedule, completing this calculation for both shows you should complete the task that’s two days late first.

Benefits of Scheduled Maintenance Critical Percent

Calculating SMCP carries many benefits for a production or manufacturing organization including smarter scheduling, higher auditing compliance, and fewer emergencies. Let’s look at these and others in more detail:

Smarter Scheduling. Maintenance managers and technicians are busy enough so having a proven measurement tool that can help prioritize tasks takes one thing off their mind. Running this simple calculation for all the overdue scheduled maintenance tasks can be done automatically, generating a prioritized work order list or assignments for the next work day. It can also be used to structure teams and bring in the right level of resources for high-priority tasks.

Higher Auditing Compliance. Certain maintenance tasks are critical to the safety of employees or the quality of the finished product. As a result, these tasks may be subject to regular internal or external audits. Without a tool like SMCP, it can be easy for tasks to get forgotten or indefinitely postponed, which may place your company out of compliance and result in fines or lead to other difficulties.

Fewer Emergencies. The SMCP calculation places those tasks that have a higher risk of causing more problems at the top of the priority list. If these tasks are not completed, they could result in a reactive maintenance order or even an emergency situation. By prioritizing overdue scheduled maintenance tasks using SMCP, these risks can be minimized.

Longer Asset Lifespan. By ensuring equipment is maintained at regular intervals and prioritized if they’re overdue, companies can maximize the lifespan of expensive equipment. This will reduce both maintenance costs and capital expenditures down the road.

Reduce Downtime. Any time equipment fails, an organization can incur significant costs in downtime. Production lines that aren’t running mean products aren’t being made and employees are being paid when they cannot work.

Prevent Hidden Losses. In addition to the cost of downtime, companies may have unhappy customers who are receiving orders late and suffer from reputation damage in the long run.

Scheduled maintenance critical percent is an excellent tool that companies can use to put those overdue work orders in the right order. This, in turn, helps lower a myriad of costs and decrease expensive downtime. As one of the foundational metrics in maintenance, SMCP can guide an organization's strategy to maximize the benefits of preventive maintenance.