Maturity Self-Assessment

Five questions. One stage of the cycle per question. Score yourself honestly. At the end, you will know which tier your plant actually operates at, and which stage is holding it back most.

Companion to: Fix the System, Chapter 4. How long it takes: two hours the first time (pulling data from the CMMS, auditing twenty work orders, running a follow-a-crew if you have not). Fifteen minutes for subsequent re-assessments once you know where to look. What you'll produce: a total score (out of 25), mapped to a tier, plus the single lowest-scoring question — which is the stage of the cycle to install against first.

Before you score

The rubric is tight on purpose. Most maturity self-assessments are designed to flatter. This one is designed to be honest. If you score yourself generously, you will invest twelve months in Tier 3 practices on a Tier 2 foundation, and the practices will fail.

• Measure, don't estimate. Every question asks for a measurable value. If you cannot measure it, the absence of measurement is itself a signal. Score that question as a 1.
• Use the last 30-90 days of data. Not your best quarter. Not "how we usually run." What the numbers show right now.
• Do this alone, first. Then have your planner, scheduler, and one supervisor each do it independently. Compare. The gap between their scores and yours is diagnostic on its own.

Question 1 — Identify

What percent of maintenance work is initiated through formal notifications — as opposed to verbal reports, informal requests, or emergency dispatches?

How to measure: Pull the last 30 days of work orders. Tag each as "originated from formal notification" (CMMS entry by operator, inspector, or tech) vs "originated informally" (verbal, walkup, or dispatch-board entry without upstream notification).

If you cannot measure it — if your CMMS does not capture origin, or informal work never touches the CMMS — score this question 1. Unmeasured equals 1.

Your Q1 score: _______

Question 2 — Plan

What percent of work that reaches the technician has been formally planned — written job plan, parts kit staged, hours estimate, safety requirements — before execution begins?

How to measure: Audit 20 random completed work orders. Count how many had a written job plan attached at the time of execution. Exclude breakdowns and emergencies from the denominator only if you also exclude them from the numerator.

Your Q2 score: _______

Question 3 — Schedule

What is your weekly schedule compliance, measured as (jobs completed as scheduled) ÷ (jobs scheduled for the week)?

How to measure: Pull the last four weeks of scheduling data. Schedule compliance below 70% reliably marks Tier 1 or Tier 2. Above 85% requires an active frozen-zone policy enforced weekly, not announced quarterly.

Your Q3 score: _______

Question 4 — Execute

What is your crew's approximate wrench time (fraction of paid labor hour spent hands-on-asset)?

How to measure: If you have not done the follow-a-crew exercise from Chapter 1, do it before scoring this question. If you have not measured it, score this question 1. Unmeasured wrench time is always a 1.

Download the Ch1 companion Follow-a-Crew Field Audit Sheet at getov.xyz/toolkit/fix-the-system/ch01 if you need the template.

Your Q4 score: _______

Question 5 — Close Out and Learn

What percent of closed work orders, in the last quarter, captured all three of: a specific failure code, a specific action taken, AND at least one line of meaningful note text — as opposed to "Repaired. RTO." or equivalent?

How to measure: Pull 50 random closed work orders from the last quarter. Audit each for all three criteria. A work order that captures two of the three but is missing one does not count.

Your Q5 score: _______

Total and tier

Total score (add Q1 through Q5): _______ / 25

Your tier:

Note: Tier 4 and Tier 5 are not reachable by questions alone. They require the underlying analytics infrastructure to be operational and integrated, not merely purchased. If you scored 23-25 but your condition-monitoring data is not flowing into the CMMS and generating work orders, you are a Tier 3 plant with Tier 4 hardware — score yourself as Tier 3.

Write your tier here: _______

The more important answer

Your total score tells you the tier. Your lowest single question tells you the stage of the cycle that is holding you back most. That is where Part II of the book should begin for you.

My lowest-scoring question was: Q_____ (score: ___)

That question corresponds to stage: __________________ of the five-stage cycle.

The chapter in Part II to read first:

Re-assess in 90 days

After you have installed a system against your weakest stage for 90 days, re-run this assessment. Expect the lowest question to rise by 1 point. Sometimes 2. If nothing moved, walk the floor — something you think got installed probably did not actually get installed.

Track your tier over time:

A plant that moves from Tier 2 to Tier 3 in twelve months is moving as fast as maintenance literature expects. Faster than that and you probably skipped something that will come back. Slower and something is not installed.

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