What can your maintenance team do in 24 hours? While everyone gets the same 24 hours, what’s accomplished in that time is as diverse as the parts that could break on a plant floor.
Some teams live by routines while others are stuck chasing one unexpected failure after another. How your days are organized and what fills your hours says everything about the reliability of your operation.
For those teams using Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP) effectively, they know it cuts through the chaos that can ensue on a day-to-day basis on the plant floor. PMP is a straightforward metric that helps you answer a powerful question: Are you in control of your maintenance strategy, or is the lack of one controlling you?
Whether you're running a high-volume production line or managing a lean facility, PMP provides a real-time view of how much of your maintenance time is spent on proactive, scheduled work, rather than scrambling to fix failures.
In this article, we’ll break down what PMP is, how to calculate it, and what it says about how your team operates on the shop floor.
What Is Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP)?
Planned Maintenance Percentage measures the share of maintenance hours that are proactively scheduled, compared to the total time spent on maintenance. It's expressed as a percentage and reflects how strategically your team manages its workload.
PMP calculations include:
- Planned Maintenance: Your preventive inspections, scheduled tasks, and predictive servicing. The work you put on the calendar ahead of time.
- Reactive (Unplanned) Maintenance: Emergency repairs, last-minute interventions, and anything that forces you off the plan.
Why PMP Matters for Maintenance
The gap between planned and reactive maintenance is where margins are made or lost. One builds reliability. The other drains time, budget, and morale.
Here’s the core idea: A high PMP reflects a mature, strategic maintenance operation. It means your team is executing tasks with intent, and not simply reacting to every failure. But world-class maintenance doesn’t mean 100% planned work. That’s not realistic, and it’s not even the goal.
What actually works is targeting a PMP where most of your time is planned, but you still leave room for the unexpected.
Even the most reliable plants encounter unexpected breakdowns or urgent requests. That small buffer for unplanned work gives your team the flexibility to respond without derailing the entire schedule.
How to Calculate Planned Maintenance Percentage
The formula for PMP is simple, but the insights it delivers are powerful:
PMP = (Planned Maintenance Hours ÷ Total Maintenance Hours) × 100
Here’s what each part includes:
- Planned Maintenance Hours: Time spent on tasks you scheduled in advance, like preventive work, inspections, and condition-based servicing.
- Total Maintenance Hours: Every maintenance hour logged, planned, or reactive.
Let’s break it down with a quick example: If your team logged 800 hours of planned work and 200 hours on unplanned interventions or reactive tasks in a given month:
PMP = (800 ÷ 1,000) × 100 = 80%
That 80% means four out of every five maintenance hours were strategic, not reactionary. That’s a solid performance.
PMP enables you to use calculator tools to track this metric regularly, providing insight into whether your maintenance strategy is improving or deteriorating. And, the beauty of tracking PMP is watching the trends evolve over time. When you see it climbing month after month, you know your planning is paying off. Seeing it decline gives you the opportunity to make refinements and take action before things worsen.
What Is a Good or World-Class Maintenance Metric for PMP
A planned maintenance percentage between 80% and 90% is what world-class teams aim for. That range demonstrates that you have shifted from reactive firefighting and anchored your program in proactive control. If your PMP is too low, chances are your team spends most of its time catching up instead of staying ahead.
Interestingly, if your planned maintenance percentage is extremely high, it may be a sign that some issues are not being identified or addressed in a timely manner. Or worse, that the data is being purposefully skewed with exclusions.
Different industries and operations have benchmarks that may vary or focus on specific targets. Here are some examples:
PMP in Manufacturing
In manufacturing, PMP typically ranges from 50% to 70%, with 80% as a strong target. Production lines often deal with complex processes and changing demands, making some reactive work inevitable. The challenge is to keep it from becoming the norm.
PMP in Utilities
Utilities, on the other hand, benefit from more predictable operations. With fewer moving parts and stable equipment, they can push PMP higher. A strong planned maintenance focus not only aligns with but also improves reliability and efficiency in these environments.
PMP in Food Processing
Food processing needs a more tailored approach. Regular inspections and compliance checks make planned work essential. However, temperature-sensitive assets and production demands still bring unplanned challenges. Success here means adjusting targets to strike a balance between regulation and real-world conditions.
Remember, the goal isn't eliminating all reactive work. That's unrealistic. The sweet spot is finding the right balance where you're preventing most problems while still responding effectively to the unavoidable ones.
Tips to Increase PMP and Preventive Maintenance Cost Calculation
Improving your PMP isn’t about cramming more tasks into your schedule. It’s about making the most of the time, people, and budget you already have. Here are some proven approaches to PMP that make a real difference:
1. Set Realistic Maintenance Schedules
Your maintenance calendar needs to reflect reality, not wishful thinking. When planning your schedule, consider:
What's the actual condition of each asset? How many technicians are truly available? What does the historical data tell you about failure patterns?
Create schedules with breathing room. A packed calendar might look impressive, but if your team can't realistically complete everything, your PMP will suffer. For project maintenance activities, coordinate your preventive work around major installations or upgrades to maximize efficiency. That way, you reduce conflicts and increase completion rates without overextending your team.
2. Align Skilled Technicians With the Right Tasks
Not every technician is equally fast or effective at every job. Some are strong on electrical systems, while others excel in mechanical issues. Assigning tasks based on individual strengths is how you keep jobs on track and maintain performance.
This approach also builds expertise over time. Technicians become more proficient in their specialty areas, further improving efficiency.
3. Measure Cost Per Asset and Resource Usage
Tracking the cost of preventive work is just as critical as tracking time. Start with the essentials: labor, parts, and any downtime saved. Break it down by asset.
By analyzing these numbers with a budget spreadsheet, you'll spot which PMs deliver the best return and which ones might need adjustment. Some PMs may look good on paper but end up being more expensive than the failure they’re designed to prevent. Others are budget-savers that quietly avoid massive breakdown costs.
How Does Scheduling Maintenance Save Time and Money
In short, scheduled maintenance saves money because it puts you back in control. Instead of reacting to problems, you're dictating the terms, whether it’s on cost, timing, or execution.
The savings will show up in multiple areas:
- Reduced overtime costs: Planned work happens during regular shifts, not emergency callouts at premium pay rates.
- Optimized parts inventory: You order parts in advance at standard prices, avoiding rush fees.
- Extended equipment life: Regular service prevents the accelerated wear that comes from running equipment to failure.
- Minimized production losses: You schedule maintenance during planned downtime or low-demand periods.
When maintenance is planned, you control when and how it happens. That control eliminates waste throughout the process: parts arrive on time, technicians know what to expect, and production teams can plan around the work.
Benefits of Planned Maintenance for Project Maintenance
Project-based environments bring pressure through fixed timelines, tight budgets, and zero room for error. Here’s how planned maintenance makes a difference in the tight margins of a project:
1. Reduced Unexpected Downtime
When maintenance is integrated into project plans from the outset, the likelihood of surprise breakdowns drops significantly.
For example, during a new equipment install, scheduling preventive checks on related systems (like electrical feeds or compressed air) ensures everything’s ready to support the job. That proactive alignment keeps schedules intact and eliminates costly rework.
2. Smoother Long-Term Budgeting
Project timelines stretch over months or even years. With consistent planned maintenance, cost forecasting becomes far more accurate.
Knowing what’s coming and when gives project managers control over spending and staffing. No last-minute budget gaps. No scrambling to shift resources around. Just consistent, predictable execution.
3. Greater Technician Efficiency
Planned work runs more smoothly because technicians come prepared. They arrive with the right tools, parts, and procedures already in place.
That level of preparation not only speeds things up but also raises the quality of the work. Over time, the gains compound. More jobs get done with fewer people, directly improving your PMP in project settings.
Make PMP the Backbone of Proactive Maintenance
Planned Maintenance Percentage is the clearest indicator of how in control your team really is. It’s an essential KPI. When PMP goes up, reactivity goes down. That means more uptime, fewer surprises, and better resource allocation across the board.
But getting there is the real challenge. Most teams struggle to even calculate PMP consistently, let alone improve it. That’s because work orders are scattered, schedules get missed, and there’s no unified system tracking what matters.
Tractian’s CMMS solves this. It centralizes your maintenance planning, automates work order tracking, and gives you real-time visibility into PMP across every asset and technician. No guesswork. No delays. Just a clear path to better performance.
And with dynamic asset scoring and AI-optimized PM scheduling, your team doesn’t just catch up, they get ahead. The system highlights what’s falling behind and helps you focus where it counts.
