Planned Maintenance and Breakdown Tracking at a Turkish Plant: How an ERP Sets It Up

A press stops at lunchtime. The shift supervisor calls the electrician, and the first question the electrician asks is when the machine was last serviced. The answer lives in a notebook, on someone's phone, or in the head of a technician who is on leave. Three hours of downtime follow, caused by wear that could have been spotted a week earlier.

For a plant that reports to a parent company abroad, this is more than a shop-floor annoyance. Group management sees an output shortfall and asks why. Without maintenance records, the local team can only answer with a story. This guide explains how an ERP turns maintenance into a record-based process, so the answer is a report.

Why do maintenance records end up scattered?

Rarely because of poor intent. The records simply have no common home. Breakdown calls arrive in a messaging group, preventive maintenance dates sit in a spreadsheet, and spare part purchases are logged by the purchasing department. None of the three knows about the others.

So no one can answer the basic questions. How many times did this machine fail in the last six months? Which part was replaced most often? When is the next scheduled service due? Without those answers, maintenance stays reactive: fix it when it breaks.

How is preventive maintenance set up in an ERP?

It starts with the equipment card. Every machine, vehicle or critical device is registered once, with its model, serial number, location, responsible department and any parent-child relationship (a line and the machines on it). Two kinds of triggers attach to the card.

• Calendar-based. A service every three months, for example.
• Meter-based. A filter check every set number of running hours. The meter value comes from production records or from manual entry.

When a trigger date or threshold approaches, the system opens a maintenance work order and assigns it to the responsible team. Planning no longer depends on someone remembering to check the calendar. It also answers audit questions directly. When a customer or an insurer asks for the service history of a machine, you open the record instead of searching for paper.

What happens when a breakdown is reported?

A breakdown is unplanned, so the process has to be fast and leave a trace. Three things matter.

1. One entry point. The report is opened on a phone or computer, with the equipment, a description of the fault and a priority. Phone calls and verbal handovers do not count as records.
2. An automatic work order. It links to the technician who responds, the hours spent and the parts used.
3. Measured downtime. The system calculates the gap between the moment the fault was reported and the moment the machine ran again.

The third point produces most of the value. When downtime is lost inside individual notes, "how much trouble does this machine cause" stays a guess. When it is recorded, repeat failures on the same equipment become visible. If the same part is replaced for the fifth time, the investigation moves to part quality or the way the machine is operated.

How do spare parts connect to the maintenance plan?

A maintenance plan fails quietly when the part is not on the shelf. Each equipment card should list the parts it normally consumes, and each planned work order should reserve them. When a work order is opened, the system checks stock and, if the part is short, triggers a purchase request in time for the planned date.

The reverse link matters as well. When a technician records a part used on a breakdown, the stock movement posts automatically, so the warehouse count and the maintenance record stay in agreement. This is the same discipline described in our guide to stock counting, applied to maintenance stock.

Which two metrics show maintenance performance?

Two standard measures are enough to start.

• Mean time between failures (MTBF). Operating time divided by the number of failures. A rising value means the equipment is becoming more reliable.
• Mean time to repair (MTTR). Total repair time divided by the number of repairs. A rising value points to slow diagnosis, missing parts or missing skills.

Neither number can be produced without recorded failure times and repair durations. Once the records exist, both are calculated per machine and per line, and the comparison across similar machines shows where attention should go.

How does maintenance cost become visible per machine?

Each work order carries labour hours, parts and any outside service invoice. Summed by equipment card, they show what each machine costs to keep running. This changes replacement decisions. A machine that looks cheap because its purchase value is written off may be consuming more in repairs and lost output than a new one would cost.

The same figures feed cost accounting. Maintenance posted against a cost center becomes part of the unit cost of what that line produces, a link that is also covered in our article on cost center accounting for Turkish subsidiaries.

Do all machines have to be loaded at once?

No. Start with the equipment whose stoppage halts the whole line, usually five to ten machines. Register them, define their calendar or meter triggers, and run breakdown reporting through the system for a quarter. The first quarter of data shows which machines deserve tighter schedules and which can stay on longer intervals. The rest of the equipment is added in waves.

How does Birasyo handle this?

In Birasyo, equipment cards, maintenance plans, work orders, spare part stock and production records share one data model. A calendar or meter trigger opens a maintenance work order and assigns it to the responsible team. Breakdown reports are logged against the equipment, and downtime is calculated from the reported and restored times. Parts used move out of stock automatically, and the cost of each work order is summed per piece of equipment.

For details, see the maintenance module and the manufacturing module. If you want to see how your own equipment list would be set up, request a demo.

Summary

• Maintenance records scatter because breakdowns, schedules and parts live in separate places.
• An equipment card with calendar or meter triggers opens planned work orders automatically.
• Breakdown reports need a single entry point, a linked work order and measured downtime.
• Spare parts should be tied to the plan so that a planned service is not blocked by a missing part.
• MTBF and MTTR show reliability and repair speed, and both depend on recorded times.
• Maintenance cost per machine supports repair-or-replace decisions and feeds unit cost.
• Start with five to ten critical machines and extend in waves.

Sources

This guide describes a general process and does not rely on legal thresholds or figures. MTBF and MTTR are standard reliability measures. If maintenance records are needed for insurance, safety inspections or customer audits, confirm the exact record requirements with your financial advisor and the relevant authority.