CMMS Metrics: Top 10 KPIs You Can Track with LLumin
CMMS KPIs: 10 Metrics that Prove ROI
A modern CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) puts performance insights at your fingertips, but numbers alone won’t justify investment. You need the right KPIs. If you’re reporting to executives, aiming to boost technician efficiency, or making the case to move away from reactive maintenance, this guide outlines 10 key CMMS KPIs that provide clear insights and help demonstrate ROI.
1. Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
What it measures: The average time it takes to diagnose, repair, and return a failed asset to full operation, from the moment the issue is reported to when the equipment is back online.
Why it matters: MTTR is a direct reflection of how responsive and effective your maintenance team is. A high MTTR leads to longer production halts, extended labor involvement, and increased reliance on costly emergency repairs. It’s also a red flag for potential training or coordination issues.
How CMMS helps: A modern CMMS logs precise timestamps for each phase of a work order, such as when the issue was reported, when a technician was assigned, when repairs began, and when the asset was restored. This visibility allows teams to identify bottlenecks in the repair process and benchmark performance across shifts, teams, or locations.
Good benchmark: Under 5 hours for general manufacturing environments. For high-impact equipment, targets may need to fall below 2 hours.
2. Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
What it measures: The average operating time between one failure and the next for a specific asset or asset class.
Why it matters: MTBF reflects asset reliability. A low MTBF indicates chronic issues, either the wrong maintenance approach, poor-quality components, or installation problems. A rising MTBF suggests that condition-based or preventive maintenance is working as intended.
How CMMS helps: By capturing all instances of equipment failure, including minor stoppages, a CMMS calculates MTBF accurately, with the option to filter by asset age, category, or usage intensity. This helps identify which machines are most prone to breakdown and why.
Good benchmark: No fixed number fits all. Instead, focus on trend lines: a steady or increasing MTBF is a strong indicator of maturing maintenance practices.
3. Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP)
What it measures: The percentage of total maintenance hours spent on scheduled preventive tasks rather than reactive work.
Why it matters: This KPI shows how much control your team has over equipment health. High PMP correlates with lower downtime, fewer surprises, and better labor management. A low PMP indicates you’re stuck in firefighting mode.
How CMMS helps: Tracks time spent on each task type automatically. You can view PMP by team, location, or asset class to find gaps and improve scheduling.
Good benchmark: 70–80% planned maintenance is a strong industry goal. Falling below 50% suggests reactive maintenance is consuming your resources.
4. Work Order Completion Rate
What it measures: The percentage of assigned work orders that are completed within a defined time window (daily, weekly, monthly).
Why it matters: This KPI helps gauge maintenance team performance and workload balance. Low completion rates may mean task overload, unclear priorities, or resource shortages.
How CMMS helps: CMMS software gives real-time visibility into open, completed, and overdue work orders. It can also track completion rates by technician, department, or priority level to uncover patterns.
Good benchmark: Aim for 90%+ overall. For high-priority or safety-related tasks, 100% on-time completion should be non-negotiable.
5. Maintenance Backlog
What it measures: The total volume of pending maintenance work, expressed in either labor hours or calendar days.
Why it matters: Some backlog is normal and even healthy. But a backlog that continually grows signals that your team can’t keep up. This increases the risk of missed PMs, breakdowns, and technician burnout.
How CMMS helps: Automatically calculates active work hours in the queue compared to available labor capacity. With visual dashboards, managers can plan resourcing and reprioritize critical tasks before issues escalate.
Good benchmark: A 2–4 week backlog is generally acceptable in most environments. More than that, especially for critical systems, calls for immediate corrective action.
6. Inventory Turnover Rate
What it measures: How many times a spare part or maintenance inventory item is used and replaced within a set period, typically a year.
Why it matters: Low turnover suggests you’re overstocking and tying up capital in unused parts. High turnover may lead to part shortages, emergency purchases, and costly delays during urgent repairs.
How CMMS helps: Tracks spare part consumption and links each item to specific work orders. Usage history, reorder thresholds, and supplier lead times help optimize stock levels and prevent costly gaps.
Good benchmark: Three to six turns per year is common. Under two means parts are sitting idle; over eight means your inventory is at risk of stockouts.
7. Downtime by Type (Scheduled vs. Unscheduled)
What it measures: Total hours of equipment downtime, split between scheduled events (like PM or upgrades) and unscheduled failures.
Why it matters: Not all downtime is bad, but it should be predictable. A high percentage of unscheduled downtime is a red flag for poor planning or inadequate maintenance.
How CMMS helps: Logs downtime events with detailed reasons, helping you distinguish between preventable failures and legitimate shutdowns. You can analyze patterns by asset, team, or time of day.
Good benchmark: At least 80% of downtime should be scheduled for environments with critical uptime needs. Anything lower suggests instability.
8. Maintenance Cost per Unit of Production
What it measures: Total maintenance-related expenses divided by units produced over a given time frame.
Why it matters: This ties maintenance to production output and helps justify budgets with data executives care about. It reveals how efficiently resources are being used to support production.
How CMMS helps: When linked with ERP or MES systems, a CMMS can match maintenance costs (parts, labor, overhead) to production output per line, shift, or asset.
Good benchmark: There’s no one-size-fits-all target, so focus on decreasing this metric over time while keeping uptime stable or rising.
9. Technician Utilization Rate
What it measures: The percentage of a technician’s working hours spent on productive maintenance tasks.
Why it matters: Low utilization means techs are bogged down in admin, searching for parts, or waiting on instructions. High utilization without breaks can lead to stress, mistakes, and turnover.
How CMMS helps: Mobile-enabled CMMS tools let technicians check in and out of jobs on the go. The system tracks active repair time vs. idle time, helping managers spot inefficiencies.
Good benchmark: 60–75% is sustainable for most teams. Pushing above 80% can affect quality and morale.
10. First-Time Fix Rate
What it measures: The percentage of maintenance tasks resolved successfully on the first visit, without needing follow-up work or rework.
Why it matters: A low FTFR results in wasted technician hours, recurring downtime, and frustrated stakeholders. High FTFR improves equipment reliability and technician confidence.
How CMMS helps: Captures task outcomes, root causes, and follow-up notes. Standardizes documentation so recurring jobs can be completed with fewer errors or oversights.
Good benchmark: Strive for 85% or higher. For well-documented failure modes, anything below that may point to training or system gaps.
What Happens When You Don’t Track These Metrics?
Here’s a detailed table breaking down the consequences of not tracking key CMMS metrics, what happens operationally, and how it affects performance, teams, and long-term outcomes:
| Consequence | What Happens Operationally | Impact on the Business |
| You can’t prove ROI or impact to leadership | Maintenance data remains anecdotal or incomplete. Reports lack clarity or credibility. | Budgets get cut or stay flat. Maintenance is seen as a cost center, not a strategic function. |
| Technicians repeat past mistakes | Without failure history or MTTR/FTFR data, techs don’t learn from previous issues. Common fixes are retried or missed. | Repeat breakdowns. Wasted labor. Decline in technician morale and confidence. |
| Your CMMS becomes a glorified task list | The system is used to assign tasks, but not to track performance, downtime trends, or asset health. | Zero strategic insight. Leadership can’t prioritize investments or justify upgrades. |
| Missed trends lead to missed opportunities | No visibility into MTBF, PM compliance, or failure causes. Improvements go unnoticed. Patterns are never addressed. | Preventable failures persist. Teams stay reactive. Long-term improvements stall. |
| Backlog balloons without visibility | No real-time data on pending tasks or technician workload. | Work piles up, PMs get delayed, and critical assets go unmaintained, raising risk. |
| Inventory decisions lack context | Spare part usage isn’t tied to assets or work orders. No tracking of turns or reorders. | Overstocking ties up capital. Understocking leads to emergency orders and downtime. |
| Unscheduled downtime dominates | Without tracking downtime by cause, reactive work becomes the default. | Production losses increase. Teams are constantly firefighting instead of planning. |
| Technician productivity remains unclear | No measure of utilization, job duration, or wrench time. | Overworked or underused staff. Poor scheduling. Blame games during outages. |
| Asset life cycles aren’t optimized | No data to support repair-vs-replace decisions. MTBF and lifecycle costs are invisible. | Assets run to failure. CapEx decisions become guesswork. Budgeting gets harder. |
About LLumin CMMS+
LLumin CMMS+ is built for asset-intensive businesses that need real-time visibility into their maintenance operations. Unlike basic maintenance systems that just track work orders, LLumin offers an advanced platform that ties together asset management, inventory control, and predictive maintenance all in one interface.
With LLumin, you can monitor key performance indicators like MTTR, MTBF, technician utilization, and planned maintenance compliance without needing spreadsheets or manual updates. Dashboards update in real time and give you a snapshot of performance by asset, location, or team. You can also schedule automated reports, create smart alerts, and filter data by equipment type or work order category to drill into specific issues.
Moreover, LLumin CMMS+ integrates with your existing systems, including ERP platforms and IoT sensors, so you can tie maintenance activity directly to business outcomes. Whether you’re tracking production uptime, audit readiness, or spare-parts usage, the data is accurate, complete, and always accessible.
Key features include:
- Custom KPI dashboards and real-time reporting
- Predictive maintenance tools powered by sensor data
- Full inventory and purchasing controls
- Mobile work order management for field teams
- Seamless integration with ERP and MES systems
If your team is still juggling spreadsheets, calendar reminders, or outdated tools, LLumin offers a faster way to reach operational control.
Ready to see it in action? Test drive LLumin CMMS+ today!
Conclusion
Tracking CMMS KPIs gives you a clear view of how your maintenance team is performing and where improvements are needed. MTTR, backlog hours, technician utilization, and other key metrics reveal the true impact of your processes and highlight opportunities to boost efficiency, reduce costs, and extend asset life.
But these numbers only matter when they’re part of a system that makes them actionable. LLumin CMMS+ brings everything together, such as data, workflows, inventory, and reporting, so you can focus on performance instead of paperwork.
Interested? Test drive LLumin CMMS+ today!
FAQs
What are CMMS KPIs?
CMMS KPIs are key performance indicators tracked through a Computerized Maintenance Management System. They measure how well your maintenance program is running, covering metrics like repair times, asset uptime, and scheduled maintenance compliance. These KPIs help identify inefficiencies, monitor trends, and support data-driven decisions. By focusing on the right metrics, teams can improve reliability, reduce costs, and justify resource allocation.
How do I track maintenance metrics?
Maintenance metrics are tracked automatically through your CMMS by logging work orders, asset performance, downtime, inventory usage, and technician activity. Modern systems timestamp each event, calculate KPIs in real time, and generate visual dashboards or reports. You can filter metrics by asset, team, location, or date range to find patterns. This makes it easier to measure what’s working and fix what isn’t.
What is a good MTTR or uptime benchmark?
A good MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) is typically under 5 hours for most equipment, though it depends on the asset’s complexity and industry. For uptime, high-performing facilities often aim for 90% to 98% availability on critical assets. The key is to monitor trends, declining MTTR and increasing uptime usually signal that your maintenance strategy is working.
Can CMMS prove maintenance ROI?
Yes. A CMMS provides hard data on how maintenance affects productivity, asset life, labor efficiency, and inventory costs. By tracking KPIs like downtime reduction, technician utilization, and maintenance cost per unit of production, you can show measurable improvements. This makes it easier to justify budgets, support audit readiness, and demonstrate the long-term value of your maintenance program.
Karen Rossi is a seasoned operations leader with over 30 years of experience empowering software development teams and managing corporate operations. With a track record of developing and maintaining comprehensive products and services, Karen runs company-wide operations and leads large-scale projects as COO of LLumin.