Shared Accountability for Preventive Maintenance Success

Preventive maintenance (PM) is the backbone of reliability‑based maintenance. For that reason, PM attainment has become a key performance indicator (KPI). Yet many organizations find that maintenance is not the sole owner of this metric.

While maintenance still drives the program—designing the schedule, allocating skilled staff, and ensuring the necessary materials and tools—PM success often hinges on factors beyond the maintenance department’s direct control.

When scheduled PM tasks slip, the most common culprit is a shift in the production timetable that cuts off access to the equipment slated for work. This isn’t a failure of the maintenance team; it reflects the reality that production demands frequently trump planned downtime.

That said, maintenance remains accountable when it falls short in areas within its purview—such as missing resources, inaccurate workload estimates, or inadequate skill sets. But large portions of missed PM often stem from production schedule changes that maintenance cannot influence.

Production managers often push the line forward to meet short‑term targets, even when machines are already struggling. When this happens, the risk of further downtime rises, creating a vicious cycle.

Because KPI ownership must align with control, maintenance leaders rarely can dictate the production timetable. Therefore, PM attainment should be a shared metric between maintenance and production leaders—and, when applicable, production planners. Holding both sides accountable ensures that scheduled PM tasks are completed and equipment reliability improves.