Maintenance Glossary

Understanding key maintenance terms is essential for optimizing asset management and ensuring smooth operations. This glossary provides clear definitions of common maintenance concepts, helping you navigate the world of maintenance management with ease. Whether you’re new to CMMS or an industry expert, this resource will enhance your knowledge and improve your maintenance strategies.

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Asset

Any physical item, such as equipment, machinery, vehicles, or facilities, that a company owns and maintains to ensure continuous operations and productivity.

Asset Tracking

The process of monitoring the location, condition, and status of physical assets utilized in an organization’s operations. Various strategies, resources, and best practices can assist in ensuring effective asset tracking.

Asset Utilization

A ratio that evaluates how effectively an organization utilizes its assets to generate revenue and achieve profitability. Measuring asset utilization helps organizations maximize their return on investment in asset acquisition, usage, and maintenance.

Autonomous Maintenance

A maintenance strategy in which machine operators take on certain maintenance tasks. Autonomous maintenance reduces dependence on dedicated maintenance staff, allowing them to focus on more specialized maintenance and repairs.

Asset Availability

A metric that indicates the likelihood of an asset being in operable condition at any given time. Asset availability is a component of the Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability analysis, which helps minimize waste and enhance asset productivity.

Asset Lifecycle

The various stages an asset goes through, from procurement and installation to maintenance, upgrades, and eventual disposal or decommissioning.

Barcode

A machine-readable pattern of parallel bars or lines and spaces of varying widths. When integrated with a CMMS, barcodes can be scanned to identify assets and provide maintenance teams with quick access to essential asset information. Barcode asset tracking enhances efficiency and offers various benefits for maintenance programs.

Breakdown Maintenance

Maintenance conducted on an asset after a failure occurs, aimed at restoring it to optimal operating condition. While some breakdown maintenance is unavoidable, effective management can help minimize downtime and associated losses.

Calibration

The process of adjusting and verifying measurement instruments and equipment to ensure accuracy and compliance with predefined standards.

CMMS

A software solution designed to assist businesses in managing, automating, and optimizing all of their maintenance operations. Known as Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), it is a centralized web and mobile platform that stores all maintenance data, enabling teams to oversee all maintenance tasks in one location.

Computer-Aided Facility Management (CAFM)

Technology that integrates business administration, behavioral science, architecture, and engineering principles to enhance organizational performance. CAFM systems assist facility managers in tracking, managing, and reporting on daily operations within their facility.

Condition Based Maintenance

A maintenance approach where operations are carried out based on the current condition of assets. As one of several maintenance strategies, condition-based maintenance utilizes condition monitoring data to initiate proactive maintenance and address deterioration at an early stage.

Condition Monitoring

The process of monitoring an asset’s condition to detect potential issues or maintenance requirements. This can involve techniques such as vibration analysis, ultrasonic testing, infrared testing, and other methods.

Corrective Maintenance (CM)

Maintenance activities carried out to correct defects or faults in an asset, either after a failure has occurred or to prevent further deterioration.

Continuous Manufacturing

It involves the manufacturing of large volumes of standardized products with few variations. Often known as continuous production, this method ensures the production process flows without interruption, utilizing highly standardized processes, tools, and equipment to maintain efficiency and consistency throughout.

Criticality Analysis

Criticality analysis is a structured and systematic approach to evaluating the potential risk an asset failure could pose to a business. When implementing targeted plant maintenance strategies, criticality analysis helps rank assets based on their importance, enabling the prioritization of maintenance activities.

Downtime

The period during which an asset, machine, or system is non-operational due to maintenance, failures, repairs, or unforeseen interruptions in production.

Deferred Maintenance

Deferred maintenance is the practice of delaying maintenance work to a later date due to insufficient resources. The most effective maintenance programs have a clear process in place for managing deferred maintenance, anticipating and addressing inevitable resource constraints.

Depreciation

Depreciation refers to the decline in an asset’s value over time, primarily due to wear and tear. Estimating equipment depreciation helps determine whether it is more cost-effective to replace an asset or continue with repairs.

Destructive Testing

Destructive testing is a method used to determine the exact point of failure of materials, components, or machines by applying stress until the material deforms or breaks. This type of testing is typically performed before a component enters mass production to ensure its reliability and performance.

DFMEA

Design Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (DFMEA) is a systematic, step-by-step method used to identify potential failures in a design and analyze their impact on production. Often used alongside PFMEA, DFMEA helps scrutinize new designs and processes, ensuring they are created to prevent foreseeable failures.

Enterprise Asset Management

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is a set of processes and tools that enables companies to track and manage their physical assets, such as machines, equipment, buildings, and vehicles, throughout their entire lifecycle—from procurement to disposal. Investing in EAM offers a comprehensive view of assets across locations, departments, and facilities, whether the assets are fixed or movable.

Emergency Maintenance

Unscheduled, urgent maintenance required to address unexpected failures or critical breakdowns that pose immediate risks to safety, production, or operations.

Equipment Reliability

The ability of a machine or system to perform its intended function without failure for a specified period under normal operating conditions.

F-M

Failure Analysis

The process of collecting and analyzing failure data, typically to identify the root cause of an asset malfunction or breakdown after it has occurred. The goal of failure analysis is to enhance asset reliability and prevent future failures.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

The cause of a failure, or one possible way a system may fail. Failure modes are the starting point for Failure Mode and Effects Analyses (FMEA), a common risk mitigation tool used in production and manufacturing to identify, assess, and prioritize potential risks.

Fault Detection

The process of discovering the presence of a fault in any equipment before it manifests itself in the form of a breakdown. Fault detection is a key part of understanding equipment failure, allowing maintenance teams to take corrective actions early and prevent unplanned downtime.

Fault Tolerance

The capability of any system or equipment to sustain operations during the presence of a fault. Systems and equipment with high fault tolerance, depending on the adopted fault tolerance mechanism, are able to completely or partially continue functioning even when a fault occurs, minimizing disruptions and maintaining operational continuity.

Fault Tree Analysis

A tool used to analyze the potential for system or machine failure by graphically and mathematically representing the system itself. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) uses a top-down approach to risk mitigation, starting with the identification of a potential failure (the top event) and working backward to determine its root causes. The analysis helps identify critical failure points and implement steps to minimize or eliminate the risk of failure.

Field Failure Analysis

The analysis of failed components that have been returned to suppliers, particularly those with no-fault found reports. Field Failure Analysis (FFA) involves the entire supply chain and provides discrete steps, defined procedures, and a clear allocation of responsibilities to determine the root cause of failures, improve product reliability, and prevent future issues.

Fixed Asset Management

The process of tracking, managing, monitoring, and maintaining long-life-cycle assets. Different software tools are utilized to optimize fixed asset management and maximize the value of an organization’s most expensive assets.

Fixed Asset Turnover Ratio (FATR)

A metric that measures how effectively a company generates revenue using its machines and equipment. Commonly analyzed alongside Return on Fixed Assets (RoFA), the Fixed Asset Turnover Ratio (FATR) represents the ratio of net sales to fixed assets.

FMEA

An analytical method used to identify the specific ways a process might fail and how those failures could affect the rest of the system. By pinpointing vulnerabilities in materials, manufacturing processes, and subsystems, FMEA helps reduce the potential impact on overall operations and processes.

FMECA

FMECA, short for Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis, is similar to FMEA but includes an additional criticality analysis. It examines potential failures and their impacts, while the criticality assessment helps rank failure modes, making it easier to prioritize them.

Idle Time

A period during which an asset (such as a machine or employee) is available and ready for use but not actively engaged in productive work. Idle time highlights the difference between current output and the asset’s potential maximum productivity.

IIoT

An acronym for Industrial Internet of Things, which refers to network-connected devices designed for industrial applications. Due to the mission-critical nature of these systems, IIoT maintenance is crucial to ensure their reliability, durability, scalability, and security.

Inspection

A scheduled or unscheduled assessment of equipment, facilities, or assets to check for wear, damage, or potential failure risks.

Industrial Maintenance

The processes and systems implemented in industrial environments to minimize breakdowns, maximize uptime, and ensure assets remain in optimal working condition. Managing and maintaining production equipment on an industrial scale requires specialized resources and involves an extensive list of maintenance tools.

Inventory Management

The process of tracking and controlling spare parts, tools, and maintenance supplies to ensure availability and reduce downtime.

Key Performance Indicators

Quantitative metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness of maintenance activities, such as Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Lean Maintenance

A strategy aimed at minimizing waste and improving efficiency in the management of physical assets. Lean maintenance applies lean principles—commonly used to streamline production processes—to the maintenance and repair of assets.

Lean Manufacturing

A philosophy of production focused on removing anything from a production process that does not add value to the finished product and the customer. Lean manufacturing allows organizations to generate maximum value for the customer while minimizing costs and overheads.

Lockout Tagout (LOTO)

A set of safety protocols and checklists designed to protect workers from injury caused by unexpected machine start-ups or the release of hazardous energy during maintenance activities. To guarantee compliance and ensure adequate safety for your team, it is crucial to incorporate a strictly followed LOTO procedure into your LOTO program.

Lubrication

The application of lubricants (oil, grease, or other substances) to reduce friction, wear, and heat generation in moving mechanical parts.

Machine Efficiency

A measure of how closely a machine is reaching its theoretical maximum production or output. Machine efficiency is calculated by comparing the actual output to a specific input, enabling the assessment of efficiency from various perspectives.

Machine Monitoring

A systematic approach to recording condition data from machines to evaluate their performance and assess their health. Machine monitoring delivers a reliable, consistent, and high-quality data stream to operators, maintainers, and engineers/designers, which can be utilized to enhance maintenance and operational processes.

Maintainability

A concept used by equipment manufacturers, operators, and asset managers to describe how easily an asset can be maintained. Maintainability is a component of the Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) analysis, which helps reduce waste and enhance the productivity of an asset.

Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO)

The category of products and services used to maintain assets, including spare parts, tools, consumables, and maintenance-related activities.

Maintenance

The process of maintaining or preserving a physical asset critical to a business’s operations to ensure continuous functioning. Most businesses combine three types of maintenance and organize their efforts based on a specific maintenance strategy that best fits their needs.

Maintenance Checklist

A tool used by maintenance personnel to record equipment maintenance tasks and ensure that essential steps are followed consistently. Using a preventive maintenance checklist offers several benefits, including enhanced safety and better compliance with standard operating procedures.

Maintenance Costs

All costs incurred from efforts to maintain physical assets in optimal working condition. A comprehensive understanding and awareness of each maintenance cost are crucial for managing an efficient maintenance program.

Maintenance Policy

A document created, owned, and managed by senior management to define the expectations for a maintenance department. The maintenance policy’s content must align with and support the organization’s mission, values, and business objectives.

Maintenance Report

A document that provides detailed information or summaries of past maintenance activities and their impact on costs, assets, and business performance. Typically, a maintenance report is used to track KPIs and performance indicators, highlighting the maintenance department’s contribution to the organization’s success and productivity.

Maintenance Strategy

An intentional plan for managing an organization’s maintenance needs, which includes identifying maintenance requirements, methods of execution, evaluation, and documentation. Various approaches to organizing maintenance work exist, and each organization must select the most suitable strategy for its specific needs.

Mobile Maintenance

A maintenance solution that can be installed on your mobile device as an app. A dedicated mobile application, unlike a browser-accessible maintenance management system, is crucial for ensuring your team can consistently and accurately use the mobile maintenance software.

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

The time needed to repair a system and restore it to full functionality. MTTF, MTTR, and MTBF are the three key failure metrics that maintenance departments use to gain a better understanding of equipment maintenance and lifecycle.

Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)

The expected duration an item will function before it needs to be replaced. MTTF, MTTR, and MTBF are the three key failure metrics used by maintenance departments to gain a deeper understanding of equipment maintenance and lifecycle.

Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)

The time required to repair a system and restore it to full functionality, also known as Mean Time To Recover (MTTR). MTTF, MTTR, and MTBF are the three key failure metrics that maintenance departments use to better understand equipment maintenance and lifecycle.

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Non-Destructive Testing

Testing methods that preserve the structural integrity of the parts being tested. Non-destructive testing (NDT) uses various inspection techniques to assess components, either individually or in groups.

Operating Hours

A unit of time used to measure the active operating time of a machine or system. Operating hours are used to calculate various efficiency metrics, such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness, and failure metrics like MTTF.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)

A company whose products serve as components in the manufacturing of a finished product by another company. The OEM plays a crucial role in determining the long-term quality, productivity, and ROI of a procured asset, making it an essential consideration and resource for any maintenance department.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

A key performance indicator (maintenance KPI) that compares the ideal performance of your equipment to its actual performance. OEE is a measurable (numerical) method for assessing how effectively your equipment, people, and processes perform their tasks.

P-F Curve (P-F Interval)

A graphical representation of a piece of equipment’s degradation over time. The purpose of the PF curve is to identify the optimal times for performing maintenance to minimize failures and disruptions while maximizing productivity.

PFMEA

A systematic approach to identifying all potential failures in a specific process and analyzing their impact on production. Often used alongside DFMEA, PFMEA (Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) is a tool used to evaluate new designs and processes, ensuring they are structured to prevent foreseeable failures.

Planned Downtime

A designated period for scheduled maintenance and upgrades, during which assets are shut down. Planned downtime generally applies to critical assets that are so vital to production that the only option is to pause normal operations to carry out the necessary maintenance.

Planned Maintenance

A proactive maintenance management approach where services are scheduled regularly. Generally, the more planned maintenance you conduct, the longer your assets will operate at peak performance without failures.

Predictive Maintenance

A maintenance method that uses condition-monitoring techniques to track asset performance during regular operation, detect potential defects, and address them before a failure occurs. Predictive maintenance offers numerous benefits, as it provides advanced insight into maintenance needs throughout an organization.

Prescriptive Maintenance

A maintenance method that uses condition-monitoring techniques to not only determine when maintenance is needed but also identify the specific type of maintenance required. As a highly advanced technique, prescriptive maintenance necessitates an already well-developed maintenance program, but it offers numerous benefits as well.

Preventive Maintenance

Maintenance performed at regular intervals to address signs of wear before they result in breakdowns. Preventive maintenance, sometimes called preventative maintenance, is the initial step in a proactive maintenance strategy.

Proactive Maintenance

Maintenance performed to prevent a breakdown before it happens. Rather than addressing the symptoms of a failure, the goal of proactive maintenance is to identify and address the root causes of malfunctions or breakdowns in advance, preventing them from occurring.

Productive Efficiency

A concept in economics where a system produces the maximum possible output from the available resources. Also known as production efficiency, it involves using limited resources to their full potential. The maintenance team plays a crucial role in achieving productive efficiency by ensuring equipment runs smoothly.

Purchase Order

A commercial document used to control and document the purchasing of products and services from external suppliers.

Reactive Maintenance

The most basic form of physical asset management, where operators use assets until they malfunction or completely fail. Maintenance is only performed when a breakdown occurs, following a reactive maintenance approach.

Redundancy

In equipment maintenance, a reliability engineering technique designed to ensure system performance without interruption, even if a piece of equipment fails. Equipment redundancy is commonly used in industries with high availability and reliability demands.

Reliability

A term that refers to a component or system’s ability to meet specific performance standards over a defined period, assuming normal operating conditions. Reliability is a key element of the Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) analysis, which helps reduce waste and enhance asset productivity.

Reliability Centered Maintenance

A structured process that identifies problems, and when addressed, enhances the productivity of equipment and assets while reducing maintenance costs. Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is not a specific maintenance method, but rather an evaluation framework to determine the most effective maintenance strategies for each piece of machinery.

Reliability Engineering

The systematic use of best engineering practices and techniques to develop more reliable products in a cost-effective way. The reliability engineering methodology can be applied across the entire product lifecycle, including design, manufacturing, operation, and maintenance.

Repair

An action taken to restore an asset to its proper working condition. Repair and maintenance are closely related, but unlike maintenance, which is proactive, repair is performed in response to a failure.

Return on Fixed Assets (RoFA)

A calculation that measures how much money a company generates in return for its assets. Often considered alongside the Fixed Asset Turnover Ratio (FATR), RoFA is calculated by dividing a company’s current operational income by the investment cost of its fixed assets.

Risk-Based Maintenance

A methodology that helps determine the most economical use of maintenance resources. The goal of corrective risk-based maintenance is to identify critical or problematic assets and allocate maintenance resources to them, while redirecting resources away from non-critical assets.

Return on Investment (ROI)

A ratio that shows the return gained from a specific investment or expenditure. Maintenance departments use ROI to illustrate how certain investments or costs result in greater savings or efficiency, such as the CMMS ROI, which highlights the efficiencies that maintenance management technology can provide.

Root Cause Analysis

The process of identifying the underlying cause of an effect. In the context of failure analysis, root cause analysis (RCA) is used to determine the primary cause of frequent machine malfunctions or a significant machine breakdown.

Routine Maintenance

Maintenance activities carried out regularly to identify and address issues before they result in equipment failure. Routine maintenance is a crucial component of all preventive maintenance efforts.

Run-To-Failure

A maintenance strategy where maintenance is only performed when equipment has failed.

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Schedule Compliance

A maintenance KPI that tracks the number of scheduled maintenance tasks completed on time compared to the number originally scheduled. Schedule compliance is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of a maintenance program.

Sensors

Devices attached to an asset to monitor behavior changes that signal degradation or the need for maintenance. Technology that supports IIoT sensor setup is essential for using sensors to implement a predictive maintenance program.

Spare Parts

The concept of keeping an inventory of equipment repair parts so they are readily available when needed, without the delay of a purchase order and delivery, thus minimizing downtime. Spare parts management ensures that the right spare parts and resources are available at the right place and time.

Standard Operating Procedure

An official document with detailed instructions outlining how to perform a specific task. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are crucial for growing businesses that aim to maintain consistency and high quality.

Time Study

The act of observing, recording, and evaluating human work to determine the time required to perform specific tasks under set conditions at a defined pace. Conducting a time study is essential for improving efficiency on the plant floor.

Total Preventive Maintenance

An organized, standardized, and structured approach to preventive maintenance. Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM), also known as Total Productive Maintenance, trains and empowers machine operators to take ownership of and manage basic maintenance responsibilities for the machines they operate most frequently.

Troubleshooting

A step-by-step approach to identifying the root cause of an issue and determining the best solution to restore operation. Efficient troubleshooting is a critical component of asset management, diagnosis, and repair.

Unplanned Downtime

An unplanned shutdown or failure of equipment or processes. Given its potential to cause delays and financial losses, it is vital for organizations to implement machine downtime tracking to monitor both the duration and causes of unplanned downtime.

Unplanned Maintenance

An unexpected issue that occurs without warning, leaving no opportunity to control the outcome. Unplanned maintenance is an inevitable result of equipment operation.

Uptime

A measure of system reliability, expressed as the percentage of time a machine has been working and available.

Work Order

A task that is scheduled and assigned to a specific person or group of people. A work order is a request that informs your maintenance staff about what needs to be done.

Wrench Time

A metric that measures how much time a maintenance technician spends actively performing maintenance work with a tool in hand. Wrench time excludes the time spent on activities like gathering tools and spare parts, reading work orders, traveling to the job site, breaks, idle time, giving instructions, and other non-maintenance tasks.