Lehi, Utah – October 07, 2026 -- Maintenance teams across U.S. manufacturing, facilities and infrastructure sectors complete just 54% of their scheduled preventive maintenance work, according to a survey of 686 maintenance and operations professionals released by Limble at the 2026 Maintenance Heroes Summit.
Unplanned downtime costs exceed $100,000 annually for 40% of organizations
Nearly half of leaders (47%) report more than 10 hours of unplanned downtime in a typical month, and 40% put annual downtime costs at $100,000 or higher. Reactive maintenance also carries safety consequences: 65% of respondents say it puts technicians in higher-risk situations at least once a month.
Technicians spend three hours or less on hands-on repair work per shift
More than 60% of both leaders and frontline technicians estimate hands-on maintenance work accounts for three hours or less during a typical shift. Nearly half of technicians (48%) say they lose at least an hour per shift waiting on approvals or site access, time that is not available for actual repair or inspection tasks.
74% of organizations rely on a single employee to fix a critical asset
The survey found that 74% of maintenance organizations have at least one critical asset that only one staff member knows how to repair. Nearly half (47%) said their organization has already lost knowledge it could not recover after an employee departed, pointing to a structural gap in how technical expertise gets documented and transferred.
Only 39% of teams use their CMMS consistently despite 82% ownership rate
While 82% of organizations surveyed own and operate a computerized maintenance management system, just 39% report consistent use across their entire team. 71% of respondents said they had asked a colleague for information that their own system already contained, indicating data captured in these platforms is not reliably accessed or trusted.
55% of teams are piloting AI, but 92% say it needs complete data to work
More than half of maintenance teams (55%) are already using or piloting AI tools. Nearly all respondents (92%) agree that AI requires good, complete maintenance data to function effectively, and organizations further along in predictive maintenance adoption reported less unplanned downtime and more technician time spent on hands-on work.
"Most maintenance teams aren't short on technology. They're short on time and information they can trust," said Gary Specter, CEO of Limble. "Adding AI won't automatically solve the problems they face every day."
The survey was conducted July 29 to August 6, 2026, among full-time U.S. employees directly involved in maintenance or operations, with a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7%. Respondents spanned manufacturing, wholesale and distribution, facilities-intensive services, infrastructure and the public sector.