Usage-Based Maintenance

What Is Usage-Based Maintenance?

When it comes to maintenance, most industries resort only to traditional preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance. Although a maintenance team may believe it has reached its goals, a maintenance program based exclusively on time is not perfect.

Excessive maintenance or the lack of it end up being inefficient for the problems in a production line. Companies spend extra money on equipment that often does not require maintenance and end up increasing the risk of breakdowns in others that are not often utilized.

That is where Usage-Based Maintenance comes in. It is a technique that utilizes metrics and historical data to assess how much a certain item is used, and based on that, plans its maintenance.

The UBM Definition

The acronym UBM is a recent term, and it has been gaining traction in the maintenance sector. This is due to the new techniques for maintenance management, asset management, and condition monitoring.

UBM consists of a maintenance strategy based on successful use, and it focuses on maintenance planning based on the real use of the equipment.

Among others, these plans measure the main machine metrics, including:

• Limit temperature
• Downtime limit
• Equipment's utilization time

From the collection of this data, it is possible to schedule maintenance tasks. The opposite of a servicing plan based on usage is a preventive maintenance plan based on time, following a defined schedule, regardless of how long a machine remains in operation during the day.

How the Hour Meter Works in UBM

Instead of simply wondering how long the machine operated for and when to execute maintenance, you can utilize the hour meter, calculated by UBM, which informs the uptime (activity time) and/or downtime (inactivity time) of the machine, providing accuracy on when you should proceed with the maintenance.

Besides helping with the prediction, you also help with prevention. That is what we call maintenance based on usage hours.

For example: via generated reports, the industry is able to learn about the ideal conditions of the fluid and the assets. This way, the maintenance team can plan beforehand to identify possible failures that jeopardize the production performance and quality.

UBM vs. Other Maintenance Strategies

A Practical Example

Consider two identical pumps in the same facility. Pump A runs 10 hours a day; Pump B runs 2 hours a day. The manufacturer recommends an oil change every 500 operating hours.

Under a time-based schedule, both pumps might receive an oil change every 60 days. Pump A would reach 600 hours by then (overdue), while Pump B would only have logged 120 hours (over-maintained by more than 4x). UBM solves this directly: Pump A triggers its service in 50 days, Pump B in 250 days. Each machine gets attention when it actually needs it, not when the calendar says so.

Among the main maintenance management models, such as RCM, TPM, TQMain, and others, it helps to distinguish three core strategies by trigger type:

• Failure-based maintenance (FBM): the repair happens after the occurrence of a failure.
• Usage-based maintenance (UBM): a type of preventive or predictive maintenance. After a given time of use by the machine, the service is executed.
• Condition-based maintenance (CBM): considered a type of preventive maintenance. Executed when the condition does not meet the pre-determined criteria.

The Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT) in the Netherlands also includes these models within its maintenance management framework, applied through a structured flowchart approach.

If the benefits of a strategy outweigh its costs, it then proves to be highly recommended. For old assets that have predictive indicators (optimizable), the inspection based on usage is the most recommended. For assets that do not age with a predictive indicator, CBM is the most efficient through continuous monitoring.

After all, you cannot optimize the inspection time. This claim is justified only if the corrective maintenance is more costly than the preventive and the latter more costly than inspection. Corrective maintenance is almost always more costly than preventive maintenance owing to its unplanned nature.

When to Use Usage-Based Maintenance

UBM is most effective when equipment wear correlates directly with how much an asset runs, not how long it has been sitting in the facility. Use these criteria to decide:

• Use UBM when assets have a measurable usage indicator (operating hours, production cycles, distance traveled) and the manufacturer specifies service intervals in those same units.
• Prefer TBM when all units in a facility run at a consistently similar pace and the overhead of tracking individual usage data outweighs the benefit.
• Prefer CBM when wear is driven by environmental factors such as load spikes, contamination, or temperature swings that usage hours alone do not capture.
• Combine UBM and CBM for high-criticality assets: use operating hours to set a baseline service interval, and layer in sensor data to catch anomalies between scheduled tasks.

Industries where UBM is particularly common include fleet and vehicle maintenance (engine hours or mileage), CNC machining (spindle cycles), compressors and pumps (run hours), and HVAC systems (fan cycles or runtime).

What Is the Functionality of Maintenance Based on Usage?

Often times, the strategies used in preventive maintenance are approaches based on the calendar or on the equipment's use.

The maintenance based on usage hours can be easily executed, scheduling maintenance activities in recurrent times, combining the best of both worlds: preventive maintenance based on usage.

As mentioned earlier, maintenance based on hours of use is a type of preventive or predictive maintenance, changing according to the chosen strategy by the maintenance team. The team is triggered according to the real utilization of the assets, taking into account the average use daily, the specified due date, the operator's diagnostics, or the online monitoring system.

This maintenance is normally a better approach than time triggers, once you have the best of both approaches: the maintenance is triggered by the estimated utilization, being easier to predict future occurrences.

Steps of Usage-Based Maintenance

Step 1: Definition of Sensor Limits

The usage limits are defined according to the type of machine that will be in operation, and normally follow the equipment's cycles, such as the time of use.

They can be defined based on historical data of similar assets or on the supplier's recommendations.

Step 2: Configuration in a System

The maintenance based on hours of use depends on the equipment's record of utilization, therefore it needs to be configured in the machinery as well as in the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

The system's platform is where the operator configures the temperature limits, the vibration maximum limit, data from the equipment's components such as bearings, belts, or pulleys, machinery power, downtime limit, equipment's time of use, and other machinery data that will be collected by the monitoring sensor.

Step 3: Data Collection in a CMMS

All machine readings, no matter how many, go to the system. With the CMMS functionality, readings are recorded in a clear and streamlined way. Also, they are recorded in operational reports for verification.

The data will be used not only for the prevention of unexpected failures but also to generate valuable insights for the maintenance team.

7 Benefits of Maintenance Based on Hours of Use

Benefit 1: Increased Equipment Lifespan

All machines wear out over time, which is natural. However, it is not normal to accept frequent failures in the equipment and replace it after a short period of use. Even the natural wear and tear should be followed all the time by the maintenance team.

With maintenance up to date, along with the online monitoring, the chances of increasing the equipment's lifespan are higher. When both are kept on a regular basis, the lifespan tends to be longer, reducing the cost of acquisition of new machines.

Benefit 2: Increased Asset Availability

Only with time triggers, it is very hard to predict when you will have to execute the maintenance of an asset.

Establishing a UBM maintenance strategy, you will have a guarantee that the assets are in operation and under safe conditions of operation.

With maintenance based on hours of use, you will know exactly what is happening to the machinery. This technique can help reduce unnecessary extra maintenance and maximize the asset's availability.

Benefit 3: Prevented Unexpected Breakdowns

You will receive alerts when any abnormality is identified in the asset. Taking into account the real utilization of the asset, the maintenance activities will be identified by the manager in any possible anomaly.

Relying on preventive maintenance readings instead of simply time is better because it is associated with the utilization of the asset instead of a random date.

Benefit 4: More Efficient Data Collection

Instead of complex spreadsheets, you will need an online monitoring system to follow the company's critical machinery. The maintenance technicians will easily record the readings of the equipment when necessary.

Remember: learning more about the extent to which the risks related to how each asset can impact your operation is crucial for the industry's performance.

Benefit 5: Less Downtime

The failures generated due to errors in the maintenance schedule can cause significant losses to the company, especially financially.

With the implementation of UBM it is possible to reduce failures, and/or identify them beforehand so that they do not lead to unexpected downtime, ensuring the assets remain functioning in the most suitable way.

Implementing a maintenance program based on hours of use in your company can be an excellent way to reduce costs and the chance of unexpected breakdowns or production stops.

Benefit 6: Making Better Decisions

Before the production line faces any damage or stop, the maintenance team will be alert, because through UBM they will receive automatic alerts and information about each asset's health.

For example, a maintenance manager overseeing 20 pumps across two shifts can configure usage thresholds in the CMMS so that each pump triggers a work order independently based on its own runtime. The manager no longer needs to manually review each asset: the system surfaces which machines are due, which are approaching their threshold, and which have capacity remaining. That visibility replaces reactive judgment with structured, data-driven scheduling.

Benefit 7: Assertive Service Orders for Routine Maintenance

With preventive maintenance, issuing service orders has always been a manual process. With the online monitoring system, the maintenance routine becomes easy and practical, since this job will be done automatically, executing the maintenance activities and notifying those responsible for the maintenance.

How Do You Implement UBM?

Maintenance based on hours of use is a maintenance strategy based on the running time of a given asset, and it is one of the main variables in maintenance management systems (CMMS).

With this tool, all members of the team have access to the assets in only one place, with total visibility of the assets.

Step 4: Set Threshold Alerts

Once usage data is flowing into the CMMS, configure alert thresholds at two levels: a warning threshold (for example, 80% of the service interval) to give the team time to prepare parts and labor, and a critical threshold (100% of the interval) to trigger the actual work order. Avoid waiting until the asset exceeds the threshold before acting, since the lead time for scheduling, parts procurement, and technician availability can push the actual service past the safe window.

Step 5: Review and Calibrate Intervals

UBM intervals should not be treated as permanent. After 3 to 6 months of data, compare actual failure history against the configured thresholds. If assets are consistently failing before the service interval is reached, tighten the threshold. If no issues are observed well beyond the interval, the threshold may be conservative and can be extended to reduce unnecessary interventions. This calibration loop is what separates a mature UBM program from a static preventive maintenance schedule.

The Bottom Line

Usage-Based Maintenance is a practical and data-driven approach that bridges the gap between rigid time-based schedules and the more sophisticated demands of condition-based monitoring. By tying maintenance activities to actual equipment use, teams can reduce unnecessary interventions, prevent unexpected failures, and extend asset lifespan.

In order to optimize and facilitate UBM in your industry, you must use the right tools. The most important is an online monitoring system that tracks real utilization, integrates with your CMMS, and gives the maintenance team the visibility to act at the right time rather than on a fixed, arbitrary schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions