Defining Your Plant’s Maintenance Costs | Maintenance Cost Definitions

Unfortunately, maintenance costs are often used to compare maintenance performance between companies or even between plants within the same company.

One other problem is that there is typially no standard for measuring maintenance costs.

Different Definitions of Maintenance Costs

Each company, usually each plant within a company and often each department within a plant develop their own definition of “maintenance costs.”

For this reason, maintenance cost comparisons should always be accompanied by a clear definition of what is included and excluded for each plant included in the comparison.

Recommended Cost Category

If you are in the process of defining maintenance costs, or believe that your definition needs updating, the following table may be of help.

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Other Factors to Consider

There are other specific activities that may be performed by Maintenance people and these should be considered and defined, such as snow removal, reading utility meters, etc.

A clear definition is important so that cost trends can be identified, which is the “comparison” that is of the greatest value. The definition becomes critical if costs are used as part of an incentive, for example, where maintenance is contracted to an outside company.