Maintenance Acronyms: Common Abbreviations and Their Meanings
The world of maintenance is already complex, even before conversations get filled with enough abbreviations to make your head spin. Acronyms can be a helpful way to discuss things like “Failure reporting, analysis, and corrective action” without having to take a mid-sentence detour, but they’re only helpful if you know what they mean.
There are a myriad of relevant maintenance acronyms that are used every day and understanding them is a great first step into understanding maintenance management. Here’s a list of some of the more common ones to either get you started or refresh your knowledge.
1. CMMS: Computerized Maintenance Management System
A CMMS is a Computerized Maintenance Management System, software that organizes maintenance-related data and helps a business track assets, schedule maintenance and manage work orders.
2. EAM: Enterprise Asset Management
EAM stands for Enterprise Asset Management. EAM software tracks assets throughout their lifecycle, managing the acquisition, maintenance, and disposal of all assets within an organization. CMMS and EAM features and functionalities often overlap.
3. PM: Preventive Maintenance
PM is preventive maintenance, a type of maintenance strategy that relies on proactive work. Preventive maintenance is all about preventing issues before they occur with inspections, calibration, and testing. Maintenance is scheduled on time-based or usage-based intervals to keep all assets running at optimal performance.
4. PdM: Predictive Maintenance
PdM is predictive maintenance, a type of maintenance strategy that uses data analysis to determine when and where maintenance is required. Similar to preventive maintenance, PdM prevents unnecessary downtime and focuses on asset data to tackle problems before they happen.
5. CBM: Condition-Based Maintenance
CBM is condition-based maintenance, a type of maintenance strategy that plans maintenance around the current condition of assets. All assets are constantly monitored and the ones with declining performance or aging parts are prioritized for maintenance.
6. TPM: Total Productive Maintenance
TPM stands for Total Productive Maintenance, a maintenance philosophy with the goal of maximum productivity in the workplace. It is centered around efficiency to eliminate unplanned downtime, unforced errors, and wasted resources. TPM requires not just efficient machinery but a cooperative and efficient workforce as well.
7. RCM: Reliability-Centered Maintenance
RCM is reliability-centered maintenance, a maintenance strategy that is built around monitoring the reliability of assets. This is an organization-level strategy that takes all assets into account and builds out a unique schedule of maintenance for each one. The goal is to avoid downtime while also improving efficiency and lowering costs. It requires a detailed upfront analysis, but once in place can be extremely effective.
8. RTF: Run-to-Failure
RTF is Run-to-Failure, a maintenance strategy built around not doing maintenance until something breaks. Equipment is simply used until it needs to be replaced. This can provide savings upfront, but will inevitably increase emergency repair costs in the long run.
9. WO: Work Order
WO stands for work order, a form that outlines a maintenance task. A normal work order will contain all the details needed to complete maintenance, including step-by-step instructions on what is required, when maintenance should be completed, and where it is needed. Work orders are the backbone of any good maintenance strategy.
10. MRO: Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul
MRO is Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul and refers to the process of keeping an organization up and running. It encompasses all the tests and equipment used to keep assets operational. It can also be called Maintenance, Repair, and Operations.
11. RCA: Root Cause Analysis
RCA is Root Cause Analysis, a technique used to discover the fundamental cause of equipment failures. RCA focuses on understanding not just how but why failures occur, providing technicians valuable insight into preventing failures in the future. A Pareto Chart, Fault Tree Analysis, and 5 Whys analysis are all types of RCA.
12. FMEA: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis
FMEA is Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, a process in which potential equipment failures are identified and analyzed. It is focused on identifying all the failure modes that are possible before they happen and the outcome those failures will have. In maintenance, this process helps prioritize machines that may be at higher risk and allows teams to have procedures in place for all breakdown scenarios.
13. FRACAS: Failure Reporting, Analysis, and Corrective Action
FRACAS is Failure Reporting, Analysis, and Corrective Action and is the analysis of prior failures to improve maintenance moving forward. Unlike FMEA, which looks at hypothetical future failures, FRACAS is all about finding trends in existing data from actual reports. Corrective action is then taken to improve operations moving forward and avoid a repeat of past failures.
14. OEE: Overall Equipment Effectiveness
OEE is Overall Equipment Effectiveness, a score that measures the overall productivity of a manufacturing plant. It is calculated using ratings of a plant’s efficiency, downtime, and product quality. An OEE score of 100 would be a plant with no downtime, zero wasted effort, and perfect output.
15. OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer
OEM is an Original Equipment Manufacturer and refers to a company that produces parts or equipment that are used by other companies in their products. OEM parts are often needed when machines are undergoing maintenance.
16. MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures
MTBF is Mean Time Between Failures, the average time between failures for any given asset. This can be useful data when planning out preventive maintenance, but a past failure timeline does not guarantee a future failure.
17. MTTR: Mean Time to Repair
MTTR is Mean Time to Repair, the average time it takes to diagnose and repair a problem with an asset. This can provide insight into maintenance efficiency and also identify any assets that may cause longer downtime.
18. MDT: Mean Downtime
MDT is Mean Downtime, the average time an asset spends out of service. This does not only include downtime due to failures but also scheduled maintenance that may take the asset offline.
19. CMRP: Certified Management and Reliability Professional
CMRP is Certified Management and Reliability Professional and is a credential that certifies an individual’s maintenance knowledge and skills. It is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is currently managed by the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals.
20. PMO: Planned Maintenance Optimization
PMO is Planned Maintenance Optimization, the analysis of all planned maintenance to increase efficiency. It is a holistic look at maintenance tasks to trim fat and run a leaner operation. When effective, PMO will help decrease planned downtime, eliminate waste, and reduce cost.