18th FVI Expert Breakfast

Topic: "Global KPIs – Curse or Blessing?" – How ElringKlinger organized the chaos of maintenance KPIs.

René Hackbart (ElringKlinger) was a guest, who built a KPI system for 30 plants worldwide. He honestly reported on the failure of the first attempts and the success of radical simplification.

• The 50-KPI Disaster: Initially, over 50 KPIs were defined because it was thought "More helps more." The result was chaos. No one maintained the data, the values were not comparable. The learning: "If you don't get the data automatically from the system, the KPI is worthless." Manual reporting in Excel doesn't work in the long run (point/comma errors, different versions).

• Radical Reduction: ElringKlinger cut almost everything down to 5 reliable KPIs (e.g., MTTR, Unplanned Maintenance Cost Ratio). Less is more, as long as the data quality is right.
• The MTBF Myth: The "Mean Time Between Failure" (MTBF) is the favorite in theory, but often useless in practice because the data base (When exactly was the failure? What counts as a failure?) is too poor. René Hackbart eliminated it because it raised more questions than it answered.
• Comparability is an Illusion: You cannot compare a plant with 600 employees with a mini-plant. Absolute numbers are meaningless. Ratios (e.g., maintenance costs in relation to asset value) are needed to have any basis at all.
• Automation as a Must: The new system is based on the SAP Analytics Cloud. Data is pulled automatically. There is no more manual entry. This forces the plants to live the processes cleanly in SAP (choose the correct order type), otherwise the KPI is incorrect. -> Process discipline through transparency.

Classification: No control without clean data

This episode confirms our thesis that data quality is the foundation of any digitization.

• ADAM as a Data Supplier: For KPIs like MTTR to be calculated automatically, the technician on site must report the order cleanly (start/end). If this is complicated (SAP mask), he won't do it or will do it incorrectly. ADAM makes reporting so easy (voice/click) that the data base for the management dashboard is created in the first place.

• Forcing Standardization: René Hackbart said: "Plants must not knit their own processes." ADAM supports this by centrally rolling out global standards (e.g., maintenance plans) but making them locally adaptable.

• Transparency Creates Pressure to Act: If the KPI "Unplanned Costs" is red, the plant can prove: "We have too few people." ADAM provides the facts for this discussion (e.g., backlog analysis).

Conclusion: KPIs are not an end in themselves, but a management tool. But they only work if data collection at the base ("First Mile") works. ADAM secures this First Mile.