THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TRANSIT BUS MAINTENANCE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

In this paper the role of performance measurement in a comprehensive system of maintenance management functions is summarized. It is pointed out that performance measurement is only valuable to the individual bus transit maintenance manager when performance measures seek to control the progress of the maintenance system toward performance objectives. Performance measurement should be a reflection of performance objectives. The paper also contains the results of a questionnaire administered to 92 maintenance managers of U.S. transit systems. The maintenance managers were asked to rank 36 candidate performance indicators. The resulting aggregate ranking showed a bias favoring simple indicators consisting of simple ratios or indexes and favoring indicators of two performance attributes, vehicle reliability and vehicle maintainability (essentially the cost and effort involved in maintaining vehicles). The bias towards only these two attributes may define a lack of balance in maintenance performance measurement practice.