In the most direct terms, levels of service (LOS) refers to the quality of a given service. It’s a term given to how organizations organize and manage operations to deliver the best service to stakeholders. LOS is a critical part of asset and maintenance management that helps develop infrastructure strategies to improve the value gained from business assets.
LOS can be relatively broad in scope, depending on your business, as it considers the performance of physical assets and intangible parameters. These intangible parameters can include customer expectations and satisfaction.
Other parameters include safety, quality, quantity, responsiveness, expenditures, availability, and environmental acceptability. The specific parameters reflect how your organization's various goals intersect.
Think of it this way: when you consider the aggregate expectations of your stakeholders, customers, management, and end users, what would the best service quality look like for them? What are their expectations? What would it mean to meet those expectations? What would ideal safety ratings be? Optimum output quality?
Key takeaways
- Understanding maintenance level frameworks helps maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) professionals standardize service delivery, allocate resources effectively, and justify maintenance investments across their operations.
- Maintenance levels of service provide a framework for defining service quality, aligning maintenance activities with business goals, and managing stakeholder expectations.
- Standard frameworks, like the Association Française de Normalisation levels (1-5), categorize maintenance by complexity, while the Organizational-Intermediate-Depot model categorizes it by location (on-site, backshop, depot).
- Defining your service levels involves setting clear objectives, reviewing current performance against metrics, establishing targets, and creating an implementation plan.
- A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) like MaintainX is essential for implementing, monitoring, and analyzing your service levels by tracking work orders, centralizing data, and providing real-time performance insights.
Levels of service in maintenance and asset management
Various industries and sectors use levels of service to optimize businesses. For example, the Department of Transportation applies LOS to the quality of traffic flow of a highway system by measuring parameters such as road geometry, speed and travel time of vehicles, and traffic volume.
Planner at the Department of Transportation also consider general road conditions when determining service levels for highway maintenance work.
For example, a road maintenance level of service should not be that road surface conditions, potholes, rutting, and excessive water runoff are fine unless they present a safety hazard. An excellent level of service means keeping on-and-off ramps in top shape, reducing stormwater drainage, activating snow plowing, patching potholes quickly, and scheduling yearly lane striping — all of which boost driver satisfaction and safety.
In air transport, the International Air Transport Association creates LOS parameters using factors like passenger satisfaction and queueing times at airport security.
When it comes to maintenance operations, there really is no set LOS methodology. Managers can measure maintenance service levels using the same approach that focuses on optimal business output.
For example, what are the business goals, and how do maintenance activities help support them? Who are the business stakeholders—internal or external clients—and how do we improve maintenance plans to meet their expectations? Is routine maintenance enough?
By defining different levels of service, we can identify, for example, which type of maintenance plan—preventive, condition-based, reliability-centered, etc.—to implement for each asset.
Common maintenance level frameworks
While you can create a custom levels of service model, most organizations adapt established frameworks to fit their needs. These models provide standardized language for defining maintenance tasks, required skills, and responsibilities. Using a common framework helps you benchmark performance and streamline communication across teams and sites.
Association Française de Normalisation maintenance levels
Industry professionals widely recognize the Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR) NF X 60-000 standard as a framework that classifies maintenance into five levels based on complexity. Each level corresponds to the skills, tools, and procedures that a task requires.
Organizational, intermediate, and depot level maintenance
This framework, originating in the military, categorizes maintenance based on where teams perform the work. It proves highly effective for large manufacturing facilities or multi-site operations (particularly those managing complex assets across 200 sites like Cintas, who successfully implemented standardized processes in just nine weeks).
- Organizational (O-level): Operators or on-site technicians perform work directly on the asset at its operational site. Examples include routine inspections, servicing, and minor repairs on production equipment.
- Intermediate (I-level): More complex repairs requiring specialized tools and technicians in a dedicated on-site maintenance shop. This might include component replacements or equipment that you must move off the production line.
- Depot (D-level): Centralized off-site facilities or the OEM perform major overhauls and rebuilding. This includes complete engine rebuilds or major equipment refurbishments.
Defining levels of service
Properly defining your service levels goes beyond just improving maintenance services. You always want to perform at an optimal level, get the most value from operations, and reduce waste. Defining your service levels helps track just how well you're doing and take note of places where you might be falling short, which is the first step toward improving.
For example, a maintenance manager at a food processing facility might define Level 1 service as ensuring 99.5% equipment uptime during peak production seasons, while Level 3 service includes predictive maintenance programs that prevent contamination risks and regulatory violations.
Sure, keeping track of your maintenance levels helps, but it also keeps your company competitive in the industry. More importantly, defining your service levels improves your company's maintenance performance and can help you outpace competitors.
Levels of service and stakeholders
Managing your service levels also ensures stakeholder satisfaction. To do so, keep track of stakeholder requirements, how well you're meeting them, and adjust as needed. For stakeholder satisfaction, consider both internal and external stakeholders.
Internal stakeholders
What internal clients have a stake in your team? This often includes compliance, finance, and human resources teams. What are their expectations from your department?
Answering these questions is the first step in knowing what metrics to use to benchmark your team's performance.
External stakeholders
In addition to clients and end users, consider the minimum standards guiding service providers in your industry.
These include the requirements of industry regulatory bodies and state/federal compliance expectations. For example, are there industry limits on the number of people who can be on the production floor at a time, specifications for protective gear for staff, or guidelines for waste disposal?
Considering these will help define a robust set of criteria.
How to define levels of service
While each organization's approach varies, defining your company's maintenance levels typically includes planning, implementation, monitoring, and analysis.
1. Define maintenance objectives, metrics, and needs
Defining your company's goals, objectives, and needs goes beyond the bottom line. Look at your company's mission, as well as any other goals. You'll want to ask questions regarding your internal stakeholders as well.
What are the finance department's expectations? For example, do they have revenue targets for your operations? Does human resources have certain attendance expectations?
Also, consider the external stakeholders. Taking all of these into account, you can build a clear picture of what the strategic goals of your operations are and what metrics you're working toward.
2. Review current maintenance performance
Measure your current performance against the set metrics. Is the team hitting the goals or falling short of benchmarks? You also want to go a bit further and benchmark against industry averages.
In addition to your company's goals, what else is happening in your industry? What are other industry providers doing right that you also can do? Of course, blindly following the actions of competitors is never a good idea.
However, if you're already clear on your own company's goals, you have specific parameters against which to benchmark your performance.
3. Set your levels of maintenance service targets
Once you know where you stand in comparison to your business objectives and general industry standards, set your LOS targets.
First, define what parameters you want to improve, which can be anything from customer satisfaction to maintenance costs.
Second, set specific goals for each metric and a timeline for reaching them. For example, you currently achieve 70% customer satisfaction. So, set a goal of reaching 80% within three months.
4. Plan and start levels of service
Once you know what service levels you're aiming for, create strategic plans to achieve them. For example, what would increasing customer satisfaction by 10% in a month require? Are the resources readily available, or would getting them require executive buy-in?
5. Monitor and analyze maintenance levels of service
Following the implementation of your plans, pay attention to how close you're getting to your targets. Are your plans having the intended effect, or are new issues popping up that need your attention? It helps to define beforehand how you want to track your LOS results, as well as how frequently.
Levels of service and computerized maintenance management systems
Manual tracking of maintenance levels becomes overwhelming without proper systems. Legacy approaches, like using spreadsheets and paper forms, limit your ability to benchmark performance and demonstrate value to stakeholders.
A CMMS centralizes your LOS methodology and provides the real-time insights maintenance professionals need. MaintainX enables teams to standardize processes, track performance metrics, and scale improvements across multiple sites (much like how Electro Cycle increased their preventive to reactive maintenance ratio from 40:60 to 70:30 after setting up proper documentation systems).
MaintainX customers report measurable improvements: 32% reduction in unplanned downtime and 32% savings in monthly maintenance costs. This reduction in unplanned downtime significantly exceeds the industry average improvement of 15–20% typically seen with traditional CMMS systems, showing the value of MaintainX's mobile-first approach designed specifically for frontline teams.
Maintenance levels of service FAQs
What four types of maintenance do industrial facilities use?
Industrial maintenance teams typically use four approaches: preventive maintenance (scheduled tasks like bearing lubrication), corrective maintenance (emergency repairs after failures), condition-based maintenance (repairs that sensor data triggers), and predictive maintenance (using analytics to predict failures before they occur).
How do maintenance managers determine their current maintenance level in manufacturing facilities?
Audit your team's skills, available tools, and work order complexity against frameworks like AFNOR. If most work involves simple replacements and basic troubleshooting, you're likely at Level 2. Complex diagnostics and major repairs indicate Level 3 or higher capabilities.
What is the difference between organizational-level, intermediate-level, and depot-level maintenance for manufacturing operations?
These levels define repair locations in manufacturing: O-level happens on the production floor, I-level occurs in dedicated on-site workshops for complex repairs, and D-level involves sending major overhauls to external specialists or equipment manufacturers.
The MaintainX team is made up of maintenance and manufacturing experts. They’re here to share industry knowledge, explain product features, and help workers get more done with MaintainX!
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