A maintenance backlog represents the total accumulated work—from preventive tasks to corrective repairs—that has been identified but not yet completed. While a small, well-managed backlog is a sign of healthy planning, an overgrown one is a direct threat to your bottom line. It signals a potential disconnect between your maintenance needs and your team’s capacity, leading to increased equipment downtime, higher emergency repair costs, and potential safety risks. The goal isn’t to eliminate the backlog entirely, but to control it. This guide provides ten proven strategies for effective maintenance backlog reduction, turning your maintenance operations from a reactive cost center into a proactive driver of value.
Achieving control requires a systematic approach, not just asking your team to work harder. It involves smarter prioritization, better planning, and leveraging the right tools to streamline workflows. A modern Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is central to this effort, providing the data and automation needed to implement these strategies effectively. By focusing on Managing Maintenance Backlog, you can enhance asset reliability, improve maintenance productivity, and make more informed decisions about resource allocation. These tips will help you build a sustainable process for keeping your backlog at an optimal level, ensuring your team is always focused on the right work at the right time.
Why Backlog Control Is a Business Imperative
Actively managing your maintenance backlog is not just an operational task; it’s a strategic business function with a clear return on investment. A controlled backlog directly improves financial performance by reducing overtime pay, optimizing spend on MRO inventory, and extending the lifecycle of critical assets. It enables a crucial shift from expensive, disruptive reactive repairs to cost-effective, planned maintenance activities. This proactive stance boosts overall maintenance productivity, as technicians arrive at jobs with the right parts, tools, and instructions. Furthermore, a well-managed backlog enhances safety and compliance while providing leadership with the clear data needed for accurate capital planning and resource allocation.
Key Backlog Benchmarks
Understanding where you stand is the first step toward improvement. These industry benchmarks can help you gauge the health of your current maintenance backlog and the potential impact of new strategies.
- A healthy, well-managed maintenance backlog typically contains 2 to 4 weeks of work for the available technicians.
- A backlog exceeding 8 weeks often signals systemic issues in work order management, planning, or resource allocation.
- Organizations that implement a robust CMMS for backlog management often report significant improvements in maintenance productivity.
- Some CMMS users report an average of 30% reduction in equipment downtime after implementing better work order prioritization and PM scheduling.
Our Methodology
The following ten tips are derived from established best practices in maintenance and reliability management. Each strategy was selected for its direct and measurable impact on maintenance backlog reduction and operational efficiency. The methodology focuses on actionable steps that maintenance managers and facility executives can implement to achieve tangible ROI. These tips are designed to be amplified by a CMMS platform, which provides the necessary tools for tracking, analysis, and automation to ensure sustainable results.
10 Strategies for Reducing Your Maintenance Backlog
Implementing a structured approach is key to getting your maintenance work under control. These ten strategies provide a clear roadmap for diagnosing issues, improving processes, and using technology to drive efficiency and reduce your outstanding work orders.
1. Prioritize Work Orders with a Scoring System
Role: Strategy
Snapshot: Move away from a simple “first-in, first-out” queue for maintenance tasks. Instead, develop a consistent and objective scoring system, such as a priority matrix, to evaluate every new work order. This system should be based on predefined criteria that align with your business objectives, including asset criticality, safety and environmental impact, and the potential for operational disruption. By assigning a score to each task, you ensure that your technicians’ time and effort are always directed toward the work that provides the most value and mitigates the most significant risks, rather than getting bogged down by low-priority requests.
Core Strength: It aligns maintenance activities directly with business goals, preventing minor tasks from delaying critical repairs.
Best For: Develop a clear, documented priority matrix and train all staff on its use, enforcing it through your CMMS.
Pro Tip: Review and adjust your priority matrix quarterly to ensure it still reflects business goals.
2. Implement a Formal Planning and Scheduling Process
Role: Process Improvement
Snapshot: It’s critical to separate the function of ‘planning’ a job from ‘scheduling’ it. Planning involves determining the necessary parts, tools, skills, and safety procedures required for a task. Scheduling assigns a specific time and technician to the fully planned job. Designating a maintenance planner, even as a part-time role, can dramatically improve efficiency. This person prepares detailed work packages in advance, which allows technicians to transition smoothly from one job to the next without delays, significantly increasing their productive “wrench time” and throughput.
Core Strength: Proper planning eliminates delays caused by missing parts or unclear instructions, directly boosting maintenance productivity.
Best For: Designate a planning role and create standardized work plan templates within your maintenance system.
Pro Tip: A well-planned job should have all parts, tools, and permits ready 24 hours before start time.
3. Strengthen Your Preventive Maintenance (PM) Program
Role: Proactive Management
Snapshot: The most effective way to reduce a backlog is to prevent work orders from being created in the first place. A strong preventive maintenance program is the cornerstone of this effort. By performing regular, scheduled maintenance on critical assets, you can identify and correct minor issues before they escalate into major failures that cause unplanned downtime. Use historical failure data from your CMMS to analyze trends and optimize the frequency and scope of your PM tasks. This data-driven approach ensures your PM program is efficient and effective, preventing the influx of urgent and costly emergency repairs.
Core Strength: A robust PM program reduces the influx of urgent, disruptive, and costly emergency work orders.
Best For: Use a CMMS to track asset history and automate the generation and assignment of PM tasks.
Pro Tip: Focus PM optimization efforts on the 20% of assets that cause 80% of your downtime.
4. Audit and Clean Your Existing Backlog
Role: Data Integrity
Snapshot: Your current backlog may not be an accurate reflection of the actual work required. Over time, it can become cluttered with duplicate requests, work orders that were completed but never formally closed, or tasks that are no longer relevant due to equipment changes or process updates. Conducting a systematic audit of every open work order is essential. This “backlog cleanup” removes this ghost work, reduces the perceived size of the problem, and provides an accurate baseline for future planning and scheduling. It’s a simple but powerful step that can immediately boost team morale.
Core Strength: It provides an accurate baseline and can instantly reduce the backlog, allowing for more realistic planning.
Best For: Schedule a backlog review meeting with maintenance and operations stakeholders to validate every open work order.
Pro Tip: Make backlog review a standing agenda item in your weekly maintenance planning meeting.
5. Optimize Your MRO Inventory
Role: Supply Chain Management
Snapshot: One of the biggest hidden drains on maintenance productivity is technicians waiting for necessary parts. Ineffective MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations) inventory management directly contributes to backlog growth by stalling planned work. To combat this, implement a system to manage critical spare parts, establishing clear minimum and maximum stocking levels based on usage history and lead times. For planned jobs, ensure that all required parts are identified and kitted in advance. Integrating your inventory system with your CMMS provides real-time visibility and control over your spare parts.
Core Strength: It ensures parts availability for planned work, reducing delays and increasing the completion rate of scheduled jobs.
Best For: Integrate your inventory management with your CMMS to link parts directly to work orders and assets.
Pro Tip: Analyze parts usage data to identify and remove obsolete inventory, freeing up capital and space.
6. Standardize Work Procedures with Checklists
Role: Quality Control
Snapshot: Inconsistency in how maintenance tasks are performed leads to variable repair times, quality issues, and safety risks. Counter this by creating detailed, step-by-step procedures and checklists for your most common and critical maintenance jobs. These standardized work plans ensure that every technician performs the task correctly and efficiently every time. This practice is also invaluable for training new team members and capturing the “tribal knowledge” of your most experienced technicians. Storing these procedures in a central, accessible location like a CMMS makes them easy to attach to work orders.
Core Strength: Standardization reduces variability and errors, leading to faster, safer, and more effective work execution.
Best For: Build a library of digital job plans and checklists within your CMMS, attaching them to relevant work orders.
Pro Tip: Involve senior technicians in creating and validating standardized procedures to ensure accuracy and buy-in.
7. Empower Technicians with Mobile CMMS Access
Role: Technology Enablement
Snapshot: The time your technicians spend walking to and from a central office or computer terminal to pick up work orders, log data, and close out jobs is non-productive time. Equipping your team with mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) with access to your CMMS can eliminate this waste. Mobile access allows technicians to receive assignments, view asset history and documentation, record their work, and close orders directly from the field. This not only maximizes their “wrench time” but also dramatically improves the speed and accuracy of data collection for better analysis.
Core Strength: It maximizes “wrench time” by cutting administrative overhead and accelerating the entire work order lifecycle.
Best For: Choose a CMMS with a user-friendly mobile app and provide adequate training to the team.
Pro Tip: Use the mobile device’s camera to attach photos of issues or completed work to the work order.
8. Analyze Backlog Metrics to Identify Bottlenecks
Role: Data Analysis
Snapshot: A large backlog is often a symptom of a deeper, underlying problem. To find a sustainable solution, you must use data to diagnose the root cause of its growth. Regularly review key backlog metrics and KPIs from your CMMS dashboard. Look for trends: Are certain assets or equipment types generating a disproportionate number of work orders? Is one particular craft or skill set consistently overloaded? Is there a significant delay between work identification and approval? Answering these questions with data allows you to move beyond simply managing the backlog to actively solving the systemic issues causing it.
Core Strength: It shifts focus from treating the symptom (a large backlog) to solving the underlying problems causing it.
Best For: Use the reporting dashboard in your CMMS to track backlog hours, aging, and completion rates.
Pro Tip: Create a “Top 10 Bad Actors” report to focus reliability efforts on your most problematic assets.
9. Align Maintenance and Operations Goals
Role: Collaboration
Snapshot: A lack of communication and coordination between the maintenance and operations departments is a frequent source of friction and inefficiency. When these teams have conflicting priorities, it leads to scheduling conflicts, deferred preventive maintenance, and an increase in reactive work. To overcome this, establish shared goals and open lines of communication. Operations must understand the importance of providing adequate windows for planned maintenance, and the maintenance team must understand production priorities to schedule their work with minimal disruption. This partnership is fundamental to a proactive maintenance culture.
Core Strength: Collaboration ensures maintenance is performed efficiently with minimal disruption to core business operations.
Best For: Hold regular, brief planning meetings between maintenance and operations leaders to coordinate schedules.
Pro Tip: Share key maintenance KPIs, like schedule compliance, with the operations team to foster shared ownership.
10. Right-Size Your Maintenance Resources
Role: Resource Management
Snapshot: After you have optimized your processes for prioritization, planning, and scheduling, you can get a true picture of your team’s workload versus its capacity. If your backlog continues to grow despite these efficiency gains, it may indicate a fundamental mismatch between the amount of incoming work and the resources available to complete it. Use the data from your CMMS—such as total backlog hours and required PM labor—to build an objective, data-driven business case. This analysis will clearly show whether you need additional technicians, cross-training to address skill gaps, or the strategic use of contractors.
Core Strength: A data-driven staffing case is far more effective than anecdotal evidence for securing necessary resources.
Best For: Use backlog hours and PM workload data from a CMMS to build a clear business case.
Pro Tip: Analyze work orders by craft to see if a specific skill (e.g., electrician) is the bottleneck.
Our Process
We provide a straightforward path to help you gain control over your maintenance operations. Our process is designed to understand your specific needs and demonstrate a clear solution.
- Tell us about your maintenance management needs (quick online form or call)
- Get a live demo of eWorkOrders CMMS/EAM software to see how it can simplify your maintenance operations
- Receive a customized plan to streamline your workflows — from work orders and preventive maintenance to asset tracking and inventory control
- Start using an award-winning CMMS trusted by thousands of businesses across industries including manufacturing, healthcare, food & beverage, and facilities management
- Work with our expert support team with 30+ years of experience delivering top-rated service, training, and implementation
Why Choose eWorkOrders?
Our platform and experience are focused on delivering tangible results for your maintenance team. We combine powerful software with dedicated support to ensure your success.
- Award-winning CMMS and EAM software trusted by thousands of organizations across manufacturing, healthcare, food & beverage, utilities, and facilities management
- Over 30 years of experience delivering proven maintenance management solutions and exceptional customer support
- Cloud-based platform with real-time visibility into work orders, assets, preventive maintenance, and inventory control
- Flexible configuration, mobile access, and API integration to fit any organization’s maintenance workflows and compliance needs
- Recognized by G2, Capterra, and Software Advice for Best Value, Ease of Use, and Customer Support
Take Control of Your Maintenance Backlog
An uncontrolled maintenance backlog is a significant liability that silently erodes profitability, compromises safety, and hinders operational efficiency. However, it doesn’t have to be an accepted cost of doing business. The ten strategies outlined here provide a practical framework for transforming your maintenance department from a reactive fire-fighting unit to a proactive, value-adding partner in your organization. Implementing these tips requires a commitment to process improvement and the right technology to support it. A modern CMMS like eWorkOrders provides the data, automation, and control necessary for a sustainable maintenance backlog reduction strategy. Take the first step toward greater efficiency and reliability. Book a demo today!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the ideal maintenance backlog size?
The industry benchmark for a healthy backlog is 2-4 weeks of ready, planned work for your maintenance team. This provides scheduling stability and efficiency without letting work become excessively aged or forgotten.
What’s the difference between backlog and work order prioritization?
The backlog is the total collection of all identified but uncompleted maintenance work. Work order prioritization is the process of ranking the items within that backlog to determine the sequence of work, ensuring the most critical tasks are addressed first.
How can a CMMS directly help reduce our backlog?
A CMMS helps by automating PM scheduling to prevent new reactive work, providing data to identify recurring problems, and streamlining the entire work order flow. It also optimizes inventory to ensure parts are available for planned jobs, which increases wrench time.
Can we reduce our backlog without hiring more technicians?
Yes, in many cases. The first step should always be to focus on improving maintenance productivity through better planning, scheduling, and prioritization. Empowering technicians with mobile tools can also significantly increase the amount of work your current team completes.
