The use of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) can help you answer many questions related to the maintenance activities at your facilities. Data can be viewed graphically for individual client plants or an accumulation of maintenance and inventory performance information for all plants. By viewing warning indicators pertaining to costs and performance, you can know where immediate actions are required.
Before initiating a KPI program, there are several points that need to be considered:
• Remember, the use of KPI’s can work both for and against you. Well thought out, they furnish sound data for sound decisions; poorly defined or misunderstood, they can lead to conflicts and poor management decisions.
• You must define what, how, and why you want to measure a particular activity or set of data. You should also have the authority to make the necessary changes as dictated by the KPI’s trends.
• You need to develop KPI’s that measure performance or cost from more than one view. You should have checks and balances in you program. An example might be if one metric goes up, common sense says another must go down.
• The more involvement in the KPI definition process by those participating in or having influence on a given KPI the better. Buy-in and understanding will make finding improvement opportunities as well as changes much easier.
• Be realistic when establishing your goals and expectations. Use the KPI’s to drive constant and sustainable improvements.
• Communicate your KPI’s and successes frequently and distribute as you deem necessary throughout your organization.
As you develop your suite of KPI’s you will find that some of the data that you want to see is not available or is difficult to retrieve. This may require you to modify work practices, data inputs, and even some software configuration.
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Posted by maintenance-tips at May 13, 2004 09:27 AM