A PM compliance figure below seventy percent is usually treated as a discipline problem, and it very rarely is. Services slip because the machine was needed that week, because the workshop was already full, because the part had not arrived, or because the schedule asks for more services per month than anyone can physically complete. None of those are fixed by reminding people to follow the schedule. Before any of that, it is worth checking whether the number is even measuring what you think, because a large share of apparent non-compliance turns out to be machines that should never have been on the roster. You can work through your own figure in a free 30-minute session.
Low PM Compliance Is Almost Never About Discipline
Check the denominator, find the real reasons services slip, and confirm the schedule is arithmetically achievable before asking anyone to follow it better.
First, Check What You Are Counting
Machines that should not be in the denominator inflate non-compliance without anything being wrong.
Machines parked, awaiting disposal, or held out of service but still generating scheduled services.
Hired-in equipment where the hire company holds maintenance responsibility.
Machines transferred to another site or project whose schedule nobody moved with them.
Assets on the register that no longer exist, which is more common than most fleets expect.
Calendar-triggered services on machines that barely ran, where the service was not actually due by use.
Why Services Actually Slip
A service due during a critical week loses to production every time, and that decision is usually correct in the moment.
Address by: scheduling against known demand rather than a fixed date, and flagging the conflict before it arrives rather than on the day.
Emergency work displaced planned work, which is what emergency work does. The service did not slip because it was forgotten.
Address by: the capacity arithmetic below, and by reducing emergency volume rather than fitting more around it.
The machine came in, the filter or fluid was not there, and the job was rescheduled. Recorded as non-compliance, caused by procurement.
Address by: checking stock against the forward schedule rather than at the point of service.
Meter readings not captured, so the trigger never fired. The schedule was fine; the input was missing.
Address by: capturing meter readings during the daily inspection rather than as a separate task.
Transferred, working remotely, or too far from the workshop for the service to be practical that week.
Address by: knowing where machines are, and planning services around location as well as hours.
See Which Reason Is Yours
Services tracked with the reason they slipped, so the pattern is visible rather than assumed.
The Arithmetic Nobody Does
Add up how many services your schedule requires in a typical month. Then work out how many your workshop can actually complete in that month alongside its corrective workload. If the first number exceeds the second, your compliance figure has a ceiling that no amount of discipline can raise.
Most fleets have never compared the two. The schedule was built asset by asset from manufacturer intervals, and the total demand it creates was never checked against the capacity available to meet it. A schedule that cannot be delivered is not a schedule, it is a list of things you will be non-compliant against.
When the numbers do not reconcile there are only three honest responses: increase capacity, reduce the servicing demand by adjusting intervals where the evidence supports it, or accept a lower target and stop pretending the higher one was ever reachable.
Frequently Asked Questions
What compliance figure should we target?
One your capacity can support, which is a different question from what sounds good in a report. A defensible seventy-five percent with an accurate denominator is worth more than a claimed ninety-five that nobody examines. You can work out your realistic ceiling on a call with our team.
Should we record why a service slipped?
Yes, and it is the single most useful addition. Without reasons, every slip looks the same and the response is always the same unhelpful instruction to try harder.
Is a tolerance window acceptable?
Most fleets operate one, and defining it explicitly is better than leaving it informal. What matters is that the window is deliberate and consistent rather than whatever each site decided for itself.
How do we handle machines at remote sites?
Either plan services around their return, or take the service to them and accept the travel cost. Both are decisions; leaving it to chance is not.
Where should we start?
By cleaning the denominator. It costs an afternoon and it usually moves the figure enough to change what the real problem looks like. Start with a free trial.
Fix the Measure, Then the Causes, Then the Capacity
Remove machines that should not be on the roster, record the reason behind every slipped service, and compare total scheduled demand against what your workshop can actually deliver before setting any target.
