A strong maintenance strategy starts when teams base every decision on real data.
Tracking and reporting the right metrics helps teams understand how their people and assets are performing and how they compare to industry standards.
But when you start looking at the most common performance numbers, it’s easy to get confused. In fact, relying on the wrong metric can create the impression that your maintenance department is underperforming, when the actual issue might be somewhere else.
Let’s talk about the main differences to make sure you always choose the right information for the job and prepare for more strategic operations!
To turn metrics into a winning strategy that secures your funding, download Limble’s 2026 Annual Maintenance Plan and start building your comprehensive, data-backed business proposal.
The Basics: MTTF and MTBF
Before diving into the more complex metrics, let’s start by understanding the foundational ones that measure an asset’s lifespan. Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) are important because they help predict asset lifecycles and evaluate the effectiveness of your maintenance processes.
Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)
MTTF measures how long non-repairable assets run before failing. Monitoring this metric helps you predict the asset’s lifecycle to plan and schedule replacements.
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
MTBF measures how long repairable assets run before needing maintenance. Use MTBF to predict each asset’s lifecycles and gauge the effectiveness of your maintenance processes.
Need quick access to all the maintenance metrics formulas in one place? Download our Maintenance Metrics Guide for a complete cheat sheet.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
When calculating asset performance, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is the most important metric for tracking maintenance and operational efficiency. It gives a detailed look at how well assets and systems perform by considering availability, performance, and the quality of output.
The key to OEE is its focus: it measures asset performance only during the time it was scheduled for production.
OEE answers the question: “How effectively did the equipment run when we planned for it to run?”
If your OEE is low, ineffective maintenance could be to blame. Specifically, low OEE usually points to maintenance issues like unplanned downtime or performance losses.
Overall Operations Effectiveness (OOE)
While OEE provides a focused view of asset performance, Overall Operations Effectiveness (OOE) broadens the operational perspective. OOE is a wider metric that measures asset performance during operational time (the time the facility is actually open).
The major difference is that OOE includes time where the equipment was available but was not running due to external reasons, such as a lack of material, missing orders, labor shortages, etc. This time is not considered in OEE, which makes OOE a better measure of overall operational performance.
OOE answers the question: “How effectively did the equipment run while we were open for business?”
For management, OOE is valuable because it helps identify whether the asset is bottlenecked by maintenance (a low OEE score) or by upstream/downstream issues (a low OOE score when OEE is high).
Total Effective Equipment Performance (TEEP)
Total Effective Equipment Performance (TEEP) measures the highest level of capacity. While OEE and OOE measure performance based on scheduled or operational time, TEEP is the broadest metric that measures asset performance compared to the total potential operational time.
The main difference is that TEEP includes all non-scheduled time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
TEEP answers the question: “How effectively did our equipment run compared to its maximum potential (24/7/365)?”
TEEP is an important measure for executives because it gives insight into capacity forecasting and spending. If your TEEP score is very low, it shows that the company has untapped capacity and may not need to invest in new equipment yet.
Crunching the numbers
Understanding maintenance metrics is the key to measuring asset performance accurately and upgrading your strategy. Each metric has a specific purpose, so you shouldn’t worry about hitting a perfect number on any of them. Instead, focus on using each one to drive specific, targeted actions and data-driven decision-making.
Data delivers value only when you apply it with purpose. For example, you should use OEE to track your team’s daily efficiency and quickly spot areas where unplanned downtime or performance losses are happening.
Then, you can use TEEP to communicate your findings strategically with the executive team about long-term capacity and future investment needs, especially when you need to make a case for new equipment or expansions.
Mastering these metrics helps you build a data-driven strategy for winning budget approval.
Download our Annual Maintenance Plan to build your comprehensive, data-backed business proposal and secure your funding for the year ahead.