Evaluating and Adjusting Maintenance Strategies
Evaluating and Adjusting Maintenance Strategies: When “Set and Forget” Becomes a Liability
A maintenance strategy is not a static document. It is a living system. Yet many organizations treat it as a one-time design exercise—often created during a transformation initiative and rarely revisited.
That is a mistake.
Operational environments change. Asset condition changes. Production demands change. If your maintenance strategy does not evolve accordingly, it will quietly drift out of alignment with risk, cost, and performance.
As ISO 55001 makes clear, asset management requires continual improvement and alignment with organizational objectives (ISO, 2014). Accordingly, your maintenance strategy must follow the same discipline.
Below is a practical framework for evaluating and adjusting maintenance strategies in a structured and defensible way.
1. Start With Performance Evidence — Not Assumptions
Strategy evaluation begins with data.
Key indicators to review:
- Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
- Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
- Schedule compliance
- Planned vs. reactive work ratio
- Maintenance cost as % of Replacement Asset Value (RAV)*
- OEE impact
If breakdown frequency is rising, reactive work is increasing, or cost is escalating without performance improvement, your strategy is underperforming.
According to McKinsey & Company (2018), organizations that systematically review maintenance effectiveness outperform peers by reducing downtime by up to 50%. The difference is not technology alone—it is disciplined reassessment.
* RAV asks the question: “Are we spending the right amount to protect long-term asset value and operational stability?”
2. Revalidate Asset Criticality
Over time, business priorities shift. Equipment that was once non-critical may now be production-limiting. New regulatory or safety exposures may have emerged.
Revisit your criticality ranking using:
- Safety impact
- Environmental exposure
- Production consequence
- Financial loss potential
- Redundancy availability
If criticality changes, maintenance intensity must change.
Continuing to apply a run-to-failure approach to newly critical assets is strategic negligence.
3. Audit Preventive Maintenance Effectiveness
Not all PM tasks add value.
Common warning signs:
- High PM compliance but continued breakdowns
- Excessive low-value inspection tasks
- OEM intervals applied blindly without operational validation
Reliability-Centered Maintenance principles (Moubray, 1997) emphasize that tasks must directly address specific failure modes. If failure data shows repeat issues that PM does not prevent, either:
- The task frequency is incorrect
- The task content is inadequate
- The failure mode was misunderstood
Preventive maintenance should be evidence-driven, not inherited tradition.
4. Integrate Predictive and Condition-Based Inputs
Modern maintenance strategies must incorporate condition monitoring where economically justified.
PwC (2017) reports that predictive maintenance can reduce breakdowns by up to 70% and maintenance costs by up to 25% when implemented properly. However, technology without strategic clarity creates noise.
Before adopting predictive tools, ask:
What failure modes are we targeting?
What is the economic consequence of failure?
What is the detection window?
Condition-based maintenance is not a trend—it is a targeted decision.
5. Review Lifecycle Economics
Maintenance strategy must align with asset lifecycle stage.
For aging assets:
- Increasing corrective maintenance may indicate renewal is required.
- High maintenance cost as % of RAV may signal capital replacement is more economical.
For newer assets:
- Over-maintenance may waste resources.
- Whole-life cost thinking ensures the strategy protects long-term value, not just short-term budgets.
As embedded within the RPC Maint asset management framework, maintenance strategy evaluation must connect with lifecycle cost modeling and capital planning to ensure integrated decision-making (RPC Maint, 2024).
6. Examine Execution Discipline
Sometimes the strategy is sound — execution is not.
Questions to test:
- Are job plans technically robust?
- Is schedule compliance above 85%?
- Are spare parts available when required?
- Are RCA recommendations implemented and verified?
Poor execution often masquerades as poor strategy.
Before rewriting your maintenance philosophy, ensure the existing one is being properly delivered.
7. Apply Structured Continuous Improvement
A practical review cycle may include:
- Quarterly KPI performance review
- Annual criticality reassessment
- Annual PM optimization workshop
- Post-failure Root Cause Analysis feedback loop
- Digital maturity review
The objective is controlled evolution, not reactive overcorrection.
Strategy adjustment should be evidence-based, risk-informed, and economically justified.
Final Thought
Maintenance strategies fail quietly.
- They fail when assets change but tasks do not.
- They fail when KPIs are reported but not interpreted.
- They fail when data is collected but not challenged.
Evaluating and adjusting your maintenance strategy is not optional. It is a leadership responsibility.
Organizations that embrace structured review move from reactive survival to controlled reliability. Those that do not eventually pay for it—through downtime, safety exposure, or capital shock.
The question is not whether your maintenance strategy was well designed.
The question is whether it is still fit for purpose.
References
ISO (2014) ISO 55001: Asset management – Management systems – Requirements. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.
McKinsey & Company (2018) The Future of Maintenance: Digital and Predictive. McKinsey Insights.
Moubray, J. (1997) Reliability-Centered Maintenance. 2nd edn. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
PwC (2017) Industry 4.0: Building the Digital Enterprise. PwC Global Industry Survey.
RPC Maint (2024) Asset Management and Maintenance Strategy Advisory Services. Available at: https://www.rpcmaint.com