Key takeaways
Short answer: Planned maintenance percentage measures how much of your maintenance work was planned in advance versus reactive firefighting — it tells you whether you are managing equipment or chasing it. Schedule compliance measures whether the work you scheduled actually got done on time. They answer different questions: one is about planning, the other about execution. High on one and low on the other hides a real problem, so read them together. See also preventive vs corrective maintenance.
Planned maintenance percentage (PMP) is the share of total maintenance hours that were planned in advance — known job, parts staged, time scheduled — versus reactive work responding to breakdowns. It is a headline measure of maintenance maturity: a low PMP means firefighting, a high PMP means the team is managing its equipment proactively.
Schedule compliance is the share of work that was scheduled for a period and actually completed on time. It measures execution, not planning — whether the plan the team made actually happened, or whether it kept getting bumped by emergencies and never got done.
A plant proudly reports 80% planned maintenance percentage — most work is planned, not reactive. Leadership relaxes. But schedule compliance is only 45%: more than half the planned work never gets done on time, repeatedly bumped by the breakdowns it was supposed to prevent. So the plant plans well but executes poorly, and the unaddressed planned work eventually becomes the breakdowns that wreck the schedule again — a vicious circle hidden by looking at PMP alone. Reading both numbers exposed it; reading one flattered it.
PMP tells you whether you plan; schedule compliance tells you whether you execute. High PMP with low compliance means good plans that never happen — the work is planned but perpetually deferred. High compliance with low PMP means you reliably do a mostly-reactive workload. Only both high means a mature, controlled maintenance function.
Raise PMP by converting reactive work into planned work — identify failures early, plan and kit the response. Raise compliance by protecting the schedule: a realistic load, a buffer for genuine emergencies, and the discipline not to bump planned work for anything that can wait. The two reinforce each other — better execution prevents the breakdowns that destroy planning.
1. Reporting PMP alone. Good planning with poor execution looks like success.
2. Reporting compliance alone. Reliably doing reactive work looks healthy but is not maturity.
3. Over-scheduling. An unrealistic plan guarantees low compliance.
4. Bumping planned work for non-emergencies. The planned work that does not happen becomes the next breakdown.
Both KPIs drive OEE Availability through their effect on breakdowns. Rising PMP and compliance together mean more failures prevented and more planned work executed, moving downtime out of production time. When one lags, the unaddressed work resurfaces as the unplanned breakdowns that drag Availability down.
See how Fabrico captures this automatically on your lines — explore OEE for manufacturing or book a demo.
PMP measures whether work was planned; compliance measures whether the planned work was actually completed on time.
Because good plans that never get executed (low compliance) still leave the work undone.
Both high — the exact targets vary, but the goal is planning most work and executing the schedule reliably.
Over-scheduling and bumping planned work for non-emergencies.
Together they prevent breakdowns and execute planned work, protecting Availability.
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