Your biggest opportunity is
Your results point to strengthening the fundamentals that help your team consistently move from reactive work to planned, repeatable execution.
Fix the foundation to break the cycle
Recurring Problems Rarely Have a Single Cause
Recurring maintenance problems rarely stem from a single piece of equipment or one isolated issue. More often, they're the result of broader operational patterns that reinforce one another over time.
Your results suggest that Work Execution is the biggest constraint on your maintenance performance. In most operations, this shows up in a few consistent ways:
- Planning and prioritization aren’t happening consistently, so urgent work keeps taking over
- Recurring failures aren’t being addressed, so the same issues keep coming back
- Preventive maintenance is in place, but it isn’t being completed reliably enough to prevent breakdowns
These gaps can allow reactive work to become the default mode of operation.
Don’t panic. This does not mean your operation needs a full overhaul. It means your best opportunity is to focus on the fundamentals first.
What the research tells us
Pro Services studied 55 manufacturing organizations to understand why recurring maintenance problems persist and what organizations that consistently improve reliability do differently.
You may recognize some of these challenges:
- The same equipment continues to fail even after repeated repairs, disrupting production and frustrating both maintenance teams and the operators who depend on it
- Preventive maintenance is often deferred because reactive work takes priority
- Critical maintenance knowledge is held by only a handful of experienced employees, making it difficult to standardize processes or prepare for retirements
- Technology investments haven't delivered the operational improvements you expected, despite significant time and effort
- Your team works hard every day, yet it still feels like you're responding to the same issues instead of moving beyond them
Get the Basics Working Consistently
Get the Basics Working Consistently
Look at what repeatedly pulls technicians away from scheduled work and identify the failures, production demands or planning gaps creating the most disruption.
Stop repairing the same problems without learning from them.
When failures repeat, build a consistent process for identifying why they happened and what needs to change to prevent them from returning.
Protect preventive maintenance execution.
Identify why scheduled PM work gets deferred or missed and establish clearer accountability for completing the work that prevents tomorrow’s failures.
continue to rely primarily on reactive or minimally planned maintenance practices.
don’t consistently identify and address the root causes of recurring failures.
have preventive maintenance programs in place but struggle with consistent execution.
consistently met all three foundational maintenance practices.
Don’t try to solve an execution problem with more complexity!
Before adding new technology, processes or major initiatives, make sure the basic disciplines are working consistently.
Get the Full Picture: Read the 2026 State of Maintenance Report
Poor Work Execution rarely exists in isolation. Visibility into maintenance performance, workforce readiness, technology investments and organizational support can all affect your ability to build a more consistent maintenance operation.
The State of Maintenance Report examines these connections across 55 manufacturing organizations and identifies seven key decisions that influence long-term maintenance performance, including which areas organizations should address first and which improvements should come later.
Use the report to understand why these challenges persist, how your results compare to the broader research and where to focus your improvement efforts next.
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