Benchmark Gap Worksheet

Eight KPIs. World-class, target, and action-threshold numbers. Plot your plant against the benchmarks. The gaps are your installation priorities, ranked by magnitude.

Companion to: Fix the System, Chapter 4. Prerequisite: the Maturity Self-Assessment (also Ch4 companion). This worksheet gives you the KPI gaps; the self-assessment gives you the stage of the cycle. Use them together. How long it takes: one hour to pull the data from your CMMS the first time. Fifteen minutes for re-scoring quarterly. What you'll produce: a ranked list of your largest KPI gaps, each mapped to the stage of the cycle where the installation should happen.

The eight KPIs

Benchmarks below draw from SMRP's published best practices metrics, ISO 55000 asset management guidance, and Terry Wireman's benchmarking work. The numbers have been stable across decades and are industry standard.

For each KPI:

• World-class = fewer than 5% of North American plants reach this
• Target = the realistic goal for a well-run program (Tier 3 plants)
• Action threshold = below/above this, the KPI is signalling a specific cycle stage is broken
• Source = the published best-practice reference

KPI 1 — PM Compliance

What it measures: the percentage of scheduled preventive maintenance work orders completed within the allowed compliance window.

My plant's current value: _______ % Gap to target: _______ % Stage of the cycle where the install happens: Identify (kit restock discipline), Plan (PM kitting), or Schedule (frozen zone for PM windows). Almost never "work harder on PMs."

KPI 2 — Schedule Compliance

What it measures: the percentage of scheduled jobs actually completed in the week they were scheduled for.

My plant's current value: _______ % Gap to target: _______ % Stage of the cycle where the install happens: Schedule (frozen zone policy) or Plan (schedule compliance usually fails because plans were incomplete).

KPI 3 — On-Time Completion

What it measures: the percentage of work orders closed within the estimated hours or by the due date.

My plant's current value: _______ % Gap to target: _______ % Stage: Plan (poor hour estimates produce late jobs) or Execute (interruption and walking time).

KPI 4 — Reactive Work %

What it measures: percentage of total work orders classified as reactive / unplanned / emergency.

My plant's current value: _______ % Gap to target: _______ % Stage: Close-out (repeat failures with no RCA → reactive work re-emerges), or Identify (operator anomalies not captured → surprises).

KPI 5 — Backlog

What it measures: ratio of total estimated hours in open backlog to available weekly crew hours.

My plant's current backlog (weeks): _______ Gap to target: _______ weeks Stage: Identify (if growing due to input overload), Plan (if growing due to planner firefighting), or Execute (if growing due to wrench-time collapse).

KPI 6 — Inspection Compliance

What it measures: percentage of scheduled inspections (regulatory, safety, condition-based) completed on time.

My plant's current value: _______ % Gap to target: _______ % Stage: Schedule (inspections get displaced by break-in work) or Identify (inspection findings not translating to work orders).

KPI 7 — Availability

What it measures: (equipment scheduled runtime − downtime) ÷ scheduled runtime.

My plant's current value: _______ % Gap to target: _______ % Stage: the cycle is a whole — availability is the last-stop indicator, usually the result of close-out discipline and identification quality combining across months.

KPI 8 — MTTR (Mean Time To Repair)

What it measures: average time from failure notification to equipment return-to-service.

My plant's current value: _______ hours Gap to target: _______ hours Stage: Plan (slow MTTR often reflects missing job plans for common failures) or Execute (walking and parts-hunting during the failure).

Rank your gaps

Transfer your gap values from each KPI above into the table below, sorted by size. The top 3 gaps are your priority order — but weight them by the stage of the cycle they point to, not just the gap size.

The cross-reference with the self-assessment

The self-assessment told you the stage of the cycle that is weakest. This worksheet tells you the KPIs that are furthest from target. They should mostly agree.

If they disagree — if, for example, your self-assessment said Q5 Close-Out was your weakest stage, but your worst KPI gap is Schedule Compliance — the disagreement is diagnostic. Re-read the "reading the chain backward" section of Chapter 3. Schedule Compliance looking bad might actually be close-out feeding bad plans through the cycle. Trust the self-assessment's stage conclusion over the KPI's surface reading.

What counts as a win

Close the gap for your weakest-stage KPI(s) to target over 90 days. Not to world-class. Target. The step from action-threshold to target is the installation Part II is designed to produce. The step from target to world-class is a separate, longer project that requires a functioning Tier 3 foundation.

Do not try to move all eight KPIs at once. A plant that improves five KPIs by 2% each has not meaningfully improved. A plant that moves one KPI from action-threshold to target has installed a system that holds.

Re-benchmark quarterly

Track the eight KPIs every quarter. The shape of progress is stage-by-stage, not linear. Expect some KPIs to hold flat while others move sharply — that is the cycle reintegrating. Over twelve months, expect three or four of the eight to cross into target range if you have installed systems against the weakest stage.

From Fix the System by Ivan Getov. Companion to Chapter 4: Where Are You. getov.xyz/toolkit/fix-the-system/ch04/benchmark-gap. Free. No email required.