Key takeaways
Short answer: PM compliance rate is the share of scheduled preventive maintenance tasks completed on or before their due date. It is the single most telling indicator of maintenance maturity. Below 70% means the team is firefighting; 85%+ means the plant runs to plan; 95%+ is world-class. Improving this number compounds — better PMs reduce breakdowns, which frees capacity to do more PMs, which reduces breakdowns further. See also Run Rate vs Design Rate.
The formula:
PM compliance = PMs completed on or before due date / PMs scheduled in the period
Period is usually a month or a rolling 30 days. The metric tells you whether the maintenance plan is actually executing.
Under 70%: reactive plant. PMs are being deferred faster than they are completed. Failures accelerate. MTBF degrades. The maintenance team is busy but losing ground.
70-85%: developing. PMs are happening but not consistently. Some areas mature, others still firefighting. Mixed maintenance culture.
85-95%: mature. The plant runs to plan. PM strategy is defensible. MTBF improving. Failures rare and managed.
95%+: world-class. Reliability is engineered. Most failures are predicted via condition monitoring before they happen. The plant rarely has a true surprise.
PM compliance is a leading indicator. When it drops, failures rise within weeks. When it rises, failures drop within months. Most other maintenance KPIs (MTBF, MTTR) are lagging — they tell you what already happened. PM compliance tells you what is about to happen.
The reactive-to-mature transition is a chicken-and-egg problem:
The transition requires committing PM time even when firefighting is loud. That requires management air cover.
1. Rolling old PMs forward. A PM scheduled for week 1 that gets moved to week 5 still counts as "done." It does not.
2. Counting partial PMs. A PM where only 4 of 7 tasks got done is not compliant.
3. Excluding "blocked" PMs. If access was unavailable, the PM was not done. Track blockers, do not exclude.
4. Aggregating across asset criticality. 90% overall compliance with 50% on critical assets is hiding a serious problem.
PM compliance drives MTBF, which drives Availability, which is one of the three OEE factors. Plants tracking only OEE miss the leading indicator that PM compliance provides.
The mature reporting pattern: PM compliance and OEE on the same dashboard, with trend lines that move together.
1. Hidden non-compliance. Marking PMs complete on paper when they were not done.
2. PM compliance as the only metric. It is the best single indicator but not the only one. Pair with MTBF and OEE.
3. Reaching 100% with low-value PMs. Compliance is meaningless if the PMs themselves are not driving reliability.
4. Not reviewing PMs annually. PMs decay; intervals drift from optimal; tasks become obsolete. Annual review keeps them honest.
A modern CMMS auto-calculates PM compliance by asset, area, line, and plant; trends it; surfaces overdue PMs; and routes overdue notifications to the right person.
Fabrico's CMMS tracks PM compliance at every level of the asset hierarchy, with trend lines and overdue routing, plus alignment with OEE to surface the leading-to-lagging connection.
See how Fabrico captures this automatically — explore OEE for manufacturing or book a demo.
Most plants use the PM due date with a small grace window (1-3 days). After the grace window, the PM is overdue and non-compliant.
Yes. Aggregate compliance hides problems on critical assets.
Track the blocker as a separate metric (PM block rate). Do not exclude from compliance.
95-98% is the practical aim. 100% sometimes signals over-padding the schedule.
5-10 percentage points per quarter with focused effort. Going from 50% to 90% is typically a 12-18 month effort.
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