9 Maintenance Goals to Improve Your Business’ Bottom Line

Setting maintenance goals can be challenging, but doing so is necessary for the success of any business with critical assets to maintain. These goals can involve everything from prioritizing tasks to extending asset lifespans. Or maybe the team requires a strategy to reduce equipment failures in aging machinery.

Whatever the reason, setting goals for your maintenance team helps members complete projects more effectively and streamline overall maintenance operations. Read on to learn how to determine, set and track maintenance goals to improve your business’ bottom line. 

The Importance of SMART Maintenance Goals 

The easiest way to set maintenance goals is by using the SMART goals method. This best-practice framework for setting goals serves as a standard across numerous industries, and it can be especially helpful for maintenance teams looking to set and accomplish clear project goals. 

But what is it exactly? SMART is an acronym that stands for the following:

• Specific: Goals for maintenance activities should include specific details, such as when the goal’s deadline is and how its success will be determined. 
• Measurable: To help avoid confusion with overly broad or vague directives, a maintenance manager will monitor a goal’s progress, determine what is needed to reach the desired outcome, assess maintenance technician performance and identify areas for improvement. 
• Attainable: Goals and expectations should be reachable by team members.
• Relevant: A team’s goals should align with the values of the company.
• Time-based: Time-specific goals allow maintenance teams to focus on completing smaller tasks along the way rather than worrying about a more extensive project scope. Goals can be reviewed at a predetermined time to gauge their success.

9 Important Maintenance Goals to Set 

Maintenance managers can make meaningful improvements to equipment reliability and maintenance operations by applying the SMART method to its maintenance goals. Here are nine examples of key goals to set to improve asset performance, reduce maintenance costs and ensure safety among team members and operators. 

1. Decrease Equipment Downtime 

Unexpected asset breakdowns and production downtime can be quite expensive for a company, so maintenance teams should look to reduce these occurrences as much as possible. While equipment downtime can’t always be avoided, setting goals ensuring assets are inspected and maintained can improve uptime.

How to achieve this goal: Let’s say you wanted to reduce downtime by 20 percent within a certain amount of time. To accomplish this, you could create a maintenance program that involves routine inspections and repairs. Teams would then document and measure downtime to determine if that 20 percent goal is attainable and to ensure techs were qualified and trained on the necessary maintenance tasks and procedures. After a predetermined amount of time, team managers could then assess performance to determine next steps.

2. Extend Equipment Lifespan

Use the SMART method to extend equipment lifespan by executing a preventive maintenance schedule for a specific asset and tracking its performance. Use an asset maintenance metric such as mean time between failure (MTBF) — the average time an asset operates between breakdowns — each month for 12 months to measure improvements. Assign trained maintenance techs to carry out the necessary tasks and ensure adherence to established protocols. 

How to achieve this goal: Aim for an MTBF that reflects longer operational periods between failures. This goal aligns with reducing unplanned equipment downtime and enhancing productivity. Routine maintenance can also help extend the asset’s lifespan.

3. Reduce Maintenance Costs 

Unexpected repairs are costly regarding labor, spare parts and downtime. The SMART method allows you to develop a maintenance strategy using predictive maintenance tools. Using sensors and IoT technologies, you can monitor equipment conditions in real time to detect any potential issues and address them before they escalate. 

How to achieve this goal: You can set a measurable goal to decrease operational costs by 20 percent over a 12-month period while maintaining optimal equipment performance by training techs to effectively use predictive maintenance software to gauge when an intervention is needed based on accurate data. 

This proactive approach, once again, reduces downtime and costly emergency repairs while extending asset reliability and lifespan. It also aligns maintenance team values with company values and long-term operational budget goals. 

4. Improve Safety

Worker safety should be the priority of every company. Using the SMART method can help companies stay up-to-date with OSHA standards and decrease the likelihood of workplace injuries and safety. For example, a company wants to set a clear goal to reduce injuries by 15 percent within six months. Through the SMART method, a maintenance team can focus its efforts on specific initiatives, like regular safety training, identifying and addressing common hazards and updating equipment to meet current safety standards and regulations. 

How to achieve this goal: Measure your team’s progress by tracking safety incidents monthly. Reinforce protocols by providing technicians with the required personal protective equipment and fostering a sense of accountability. Employee well-being, reduced downtime and enhanced productivity are  highly relevant to the success of a company. With these consistent efforts and a time-based approach, your business can become safer and more efficient in a shorter period of time.

5. Enhance Product Quality 

You can establish a clear, measurable goal of enhancing product quality using the SMART method and maintenance key performance indicators (KPIs) like overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), overall operations effectiveness (OOE) or total effective equipment performance (TEEP). 

How to achieve this goal: Let’s say your business hopes to increase the production of quality in its products by 10 percent over 12 months while addressing product defects and asset downtime. You can use the aforementioned maintenance KPIs to track performance and identify improvement areas, while teams are trained to analyze and apply data to refine workflows and optimize processes. This goal will not only help reduce waste and improve customer satisfaction and product quality, but it will also help strengthen the company’s competitiveness in the marketplace. Timely adjustments and progress can be made through monthly reviews. 

6. Maximize Energy Efficiency 

The SMART method can be used to great effect in maximizing energy efficiency and, therefore, ensuring cost savings as a result of clear maintenance planning. If you’re business wants to focus on sustainability, start by setting a goal to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent within six months 

How to achieve this goal: Start by installing sensors on assets to monitor energy usage by explicitly focusing on higher consumption areas. You can measure success each month by tracking reductions in usage.

The goal is easy to achieve with the combination of inexpensive sensor technology and team collaboration to identify inefficiencies in the process. If your company meets the target goal within six months, then your business can focus on other continuous improvements related to decreasing energy use in the work environment.

7. Switch From Reactive to Proactive Maintenance 

Another crucial maintenance goal involves switching from mostly reactive to proactive maintenance. That’s because reducing reactive maintenance and increasing proactive maintenance improves an asset’s reliability and lifespan and supports a company’s operational efficiency. And all of this can be achievable with the proper maintenance planning, resource allocation and team training. 

How to achieve this goal: Let’s look at the example of a company that hopes to achieve a ratio of 80 percent proactive maintenance to 20 percent reactive maintenance within six months. Achieving this goal will involve scheduling regular maintenance inspections, using data from those inspections to predict potential problems and prioritizing the most important repairs. Teams will then need to monitor activity records to measure their progress. 

8. Prioritize Interdepartmental Communication 

The goal of prioritizing interdepartmental communication not only requires a SMART-focused strategy, but a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. For example, a business can set a goal to implement a CMMS within three months to help stakeholders from various departments find and share real-time updates and centralized information about key equipment. You can measure its effectiveness by tracking reduced delays in equipment-related responses and enhanced coordination between all involved. 

How to achieve this goal: Achieving this goal is doable with training for those using the CMMS. Better communication keeps operational disruptions at a minimum. It also allows for greater collaboration between team members and departments, positively affecting the business.

9. Optimize Staff Training 

If you’ve noticed that staff consistently falls behind on maintenance work, you may want to set a goal to optimize staff training. For example, a company may require all team members to complete a specific 12-month training or certification program to increase the skills relevant to their roles, with the goal of improving their overall job performances. 

How to achieve this goal: Progress can be measured by tracking enrollment, course completion rates and post-training evaluations. This goal is achievable with a structured training schedule and employee support. Improved training can lead to several benefits, including a boost in employee productivity, a reduction in errors and an increase in job satisfaction.

Establishing Accountability: Tracking and Reviewing Maintenance Goals

Setting maintenance goals is only the first step. Achieving them requires a structured approach to tracking progress and holding the team accountable. Establish accountability by giving the team easy access to data and a clear process for reviewing it.

Set Up a Visual Dashboard

Do not rely on spreadsheets; create a centralized, easily accessible visual dashboard for real-time progress.

• KPI visualization: Display KPIs in a clear format.
• CMMS integration: Use a CMMS software (like Coast) to pull real-time data directly into the dashboard, automating updates. This helps prioritize the next steps.
• Accessibility: Ensure all stakeholders can view the dashboard to foster transparency and shared ownership of the goals.

Implement a Weekly (or Monthly) Review Cycle

Review meetings ensure goals stay top-of-mind and allow for timely adjustments.

• Agenda focus: Keep the meeting focused on goal progress and any roadblocks. Discuss specific wins and areas where metrics are falling short.
• Technician feedback: Require input from the maintenance technicians who are performing the work. They can offer first-hand insights that explain variances in the data.
• Iterative improvement: Use the review to refine processes and reallocate resources if an asset is continually failing.

Link Goals to Performance Reviews

For long-term success, individual maintenance goals must be tied to technician performance evaluations.

• Measurable objectives: Use the technician’s SMART goals (i.e., preventive maintenance compliance rate, training completion) as concrete metrics during annual reviews.
• Incentivize success: Reward team members who consistently meet or exceed their goal targets, reinforcing the desired behavior.

How a CMMS Can Help Track Maintenance Goals

Coast’s CMMS software can help your company track and attain its maintenance goals. 

Our app allows you to automate maintenance schedules, create work orders and simplify communication between departments. All maintenance activities will be centrally located in our app, allowing you to view equipment maintenance history and make informed decisions on what to prioritize moving forward. 

Our preventive maintenance software enables you to set specific goals and track your team’s real-time progress through detailed analytics and reports. Sign up for a free trial, and see for yourself!