How to Calculate MTTR for Facility Efficiency

Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) is an essential maintenance metric that can significantly impact your facilities management strategy. By monitoring and calculating this metric, you gain valuable insights that allow for improvements across the board.

This metric improves efficiency by showing maintenance managers how much time teams spend on repairs. Knowing this information can help your facility pinpoint where and how you can refine your maintenance processes.

This guide will help you calculate your facility’s MTTR. We’ll explore what MTTR means, why it’s important, how to calculate it, and how to utilize the data.

What Is MTTR and Why Is It Important?

MTTR measures the average time it takes to repair a system or piece of equipment. Maintenance professionals often use this number to assess their efficiency during repair. Comparing MTTR within a specific period can also help facilities maintenance management teams determine whether specific factors contribute to their repair time.

In an MTTR calculation, “repair time” refers to the entire repair cycle. That includes the time it takes to detect and respond to major incidents, not just the amount of time maintenance teams spend fixing equipment failures. Usually, the lower your MTTR is, the less downtime your facility has.

For example, if an air conditioning unit breaks down, customer satisfaction at your facility may decrease until it’s fixed. If you’re tracking MTTR, you might find that HVAC issues take an average of 6 hours to resolve. Then, you can analyze this data to implement improvements like keeping spare parts on hand or streamlining vendor communication to lower the average time.

ServiceChannel helps your maintenance teams reduce total repair time by streamlining work order tracking. This way, your technicians will see your work orders sooner to start repairs faster.

What’s the Difference Between MTTR, MTTA, and MTTF?

MTTR, MTTA, and MTTF are parts of the same whole. MTTA stands for Mean Time to Acknowledge; it measures the average time maintenance teams respond after an issue is reported. MTTF stands for Mean Time to Failure, measuring the time equipment operates before failing.

MTTA is part of MTTR, as the time it takes for maintenance teams to respond is included in your repair time. MTTF is generally compared alongside MTTR to gauge a facility’s overall downtime average.

How to Calculate MTTR Step-by-Step

1. Gather Accurate Data

Accurate data is crucial for accurately calculating MTTR. However, it’s easy to forget to note when a machine went down or came back up. To mitigate this challenge, you can use maintenance software to log work order timestamps automatically. Still, you should also double-check all of your data before you begin your calculation, even if it was automatically captured.

2. Calculate Total Maintenance Time

To determine MTTR, you must first determine the total maintenance time for the period in question. Start by defining the downtime duration for each event. Next, add all the time taken for every repair within the chosen timeframe together.

For example, if your facility had 3 breakdowns in the past month with repair durations of 2 hours, 4 hours, and 3 hours. The total maintenance time for that month would be 2 + 4 + 3 = 9 hours of downtime. Be sure to use a consistent time calculation for this process. Combining numbers of hours and minutes can lead to muddied data.

3. Count The Number of Repairs

The next step is to count the incidents your maintenance teams resolved in the same period you summed the downtime. Each completed work order or maintenance ticket counts as one repair. Be sure to include only completed repairs. If an issue was reported but not fixed, it should not be counted until resolved.

4. Apply The Formula

The MTTR Formula

The formula that you would use to calculate MTTR is as follows.

MTTR = Total Maintenance Time/Number of Repairs

In other words, you add up all the time spent on repairs over a given period divided by the number of needed repairs within that period to get an average repair time. For instance, if a facility had 10 equipment failures last month, and technicians spent a combined 40 hours to repair them, the MTTR would be 40/10 = 4 hours​.

MTTR Calculation Tips

Consistency is Key

Your CMMS serves as a single source of the truth for data across multiple sources. If your data isn’t gathered consistently, you won’t have an accurate log of your maintenance performance. Human error is susceptible to inconsistency, so using a CMMS is in your best interest.

Data Segmentation

Segment MTTR data by categories such as asset type, location, or steps in your repair processes. For instance, you might calculate separate MTTRs for HVAC systems vs. plumbing issues or compare MTTRs at different store locations. Segmented data makes it easier to pinpoint exactly where any problem areas may be.

Automated Tracking

Leverage your facilities management software to automate MTTR tracking. A good CMMS will track work order durations and generate reports that help you calculate MTTR automatically. For example, ServiceChannel’s work order software precisely tracks maintenance processes. On our platform, the “clock” on downtime starts as soon as a problem is detected, so you’ll know exactly how long it took to resolve the issue.

How to Analyze and Utilize MTTR Data

Many risk management issues for facility managers can be resolved using insights gained through MTTR calculations. Here are a few examples of how you can use MTTR data.

To Identify Workflow Bottlenecks

MTTR trends can reveal where your maintenance activities slow down. If the data shows that one particular step in the process is taking significantly longer, you can use that discovery to indicate that you need to find ways to reduce the total time spent on that step. For example, if your teams spend long waiting for parts, it may indicate inventory management issues.

To Optimize Your Maintenance Strategies

Through your analysis, you may notice recurring product or system failures that are increasing your MTTR. This data can be used to showcase the benefits of preventive maintenance to your executive leadership. Once you have their buy-in, you can adjust your maintenance strategy accordingly.

To Track Improvements Over Time

Organizations often set targets for MTTR as part of their maintenance KPIs. Tracking MTTR over time helps you see if changing your maintenance strategy is producing the desired results.

Use ServiceChannel’s Platform to Simplify Your MTTR Calculations

Counting mean time to repair without an easy way to track repair time is impossible. Manual methods such as spreadsheets are too error-prone to provide an accurate analysis. Plus, these time-consuming calculation processes can lead to increased labor costs.

Instead, count on ServiceChannel to track the average time your maintenance teams take to repair your assets. ServiceChannel automatically captures the data needed to calculate MTTR. Every work order logged in our system has timestamps for creation, dispatch, arrival, and completion. As a result, a facilities manager can simply run a report to get the total downtime and number of repairs for any given period.