How to Improve Preventive Maintenance (PM) Compliance

To improve PM compliance, you must systematically reduce the volume of low-value maintenance tasks, prioritize work based on asset criticality, and enforce the "10% Rule" for scheduling. High PM compliance is rarely achieved by simply "working harder"; it is achieved by performing Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) to ensure that technicians are only assigned tasks that directly mitigate a documented failure mode. If your compliance is low, it is likely because your maintenance backlog keeps growing, forcing technicians to abandon scheduled inspections to address emergency breakdowns.

True compliance means completing 100% of "Critical" PMs and at least 90% of all scheduled PMs within their designated time window. To reach this, organizations must shift from a "check-the-box" culture to a reliability-centered approach where the PM schedule is respected by production as a non-negotiable requirement for operational uptime.

The Step-by-Step Process to Improve Compliance

Improving PM compliance requires a transition from reactive firefighting to disciplined execution. Follow this hierarchy of interventions:

1. Conduct a PM Optimization (PMO) Audit

The most common reason for low compliance is "PM Bloat." Over time, many facilities add PM tasks every time a failure occurs, leading to a schedule filled with redundant or ineffective tasks.

• Action: Review your current PM list. If a PM task has been completed 10 times without a "finding" (a repair or adjustment), it is likely a candidate for a longer interval or elimination.
• Decision Point: If the task is purely visual and never results in a work order, delete it or move it to an operator "rounds" checklist. This frees up skilled labor for high-impact work.

2. Implement Asset Criticality Ranking

Not all PMs are created equal. If you treat a restroom exhaust fan with the same urgency as a primary bottling line motor, your compliance metrics will be skewed.

• Action: Rank assets as Critical, Essential, or Non-Critical.
• Decision Point: In weeks where labor is short, mandate that 100% of "Critical" PMs must be finished. Allow "Non-Critical" PMs to be deferred once before they trigger a management alert.

3. Enforce the 10% Rule (Maintenance Scheduling)

The 10% Rule states that a PM must be completed within 10% of its interval to be considered "compliant." For example, a 30-day PM has a 3-day grace period.

• Action: Update your CMMS to flag any work order completed outside this window as "Non-Compliant," even if it was eventually finished. This creates a realistic picture of whether you are actually preventing failures or just failing to prevent downtime.

4. Synchronize with Production Planning

PM compliance fails when the maintenance team cannot get access to the machine.

• Action: Move from a "Maintenance Schedule" to an "Integrated Plant Schedule."
• Decision Point: If production refuses to hand over a machine for a scheduled PM, the "Non-Compliance" should be logged against the Production Department's KPIs, not Maintenance. This aligns incentives across the organization.

5. Address the "Reactive Death Spiral"

When maintenance teams always firefight, PM compliance is the first thing to suffer. You cannot improve compliance until you stabilize the equipment.

• Action: Dedicate a "PM Crew" that is never pulled off for reactive calls. Even if the plant is burning down, the PM crew stays on their scheduled tasks. This is the only way to eventually reduce the number of "fires" the rest of the team has to fight.

What to Do About It: Moving Toward Condition-Based Maintenance

Once you have optimized your manual PMs, the next step to sustaining high compliance is to reduce the total number of manual interventions required. Many manual PMs, such as calendar-based lubrication schedules, actually introduce "infant mortality" failures by over-greasing or disturbing sealed systems.

To reach the next level of reliability, integrate Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM). By using sensors to monitor vibration, temperature, and ultrasonic emissions, you can replace "time-based" PMs with "as-needed" tasks. This significantly reduces the workload on your technicians, making 100% compliance on the remaining tasks much more achievable.

Factory AI provides a streamlined path to this transition. As a sensor-agnostic, no-code platform, Factory AI can be deployed across brownfield environments in as little as 14 days. It analyzes real-time data to identify the specific P-F Interval (the time between a potential failure being detected and the functional failure occurring), allowing your team to schedule repairs exactly when needed rather than guessing based on a calendar. This effectively "automates" the compliance process by ensuring that every work order generated is necessary and high-priority.

Related Questions

What is a world-class PM compliance rate? In 2026, world-class PM compliance is considered 95% or higher, with 100% compliance on all safety and environmental-critical assets. Anything below 80% indicates that the maintenance team is likely trapped in a reactive cycle and that the PM program itself needs optimization to remove low-value tasks.

Why does PM compliance often stay low despite adding more technicians? Adding headcount rarely fixes compliance if the root cause is systemic trust failure or poor planning. Without a dedicated scheduler and a clear "parts-kitting" process, new technicians will spend 40-60% of their time searching for tools and parts rather than completing PMs.

How do you calculate PM Compliance? The standard formula is: (Number of PM Work Orders Completed on Time / Number of PM Work Orders Scheduled) x 100. To be accurate, "On Time" must be defined by the 10% Rule. If a PM is completed late, it should be counted as a failure in the compliance metric to highlight scheduling or labor issues.

Can AI improve PM compliance without adding sensors? Yes. AI can analyze historical CMMS data to identify which PMs are "non-value added." By identifying tasks that never result in a follow-up work order or a change in asset performance, AI can suggest PMO actions that reduce the total workload, making it easier for the existing team to achieve 100% compliance on the tasks that actually matter.