Because maintenance expenditures make up a percentage of production costs, attention is being turned to maintenance. Many companies have tried to use standard production methods to control maintenance. This is not successful. The maintenance can increase profits in twomain ways: decreasing expenses and increasing capacity. Maintenance costs consist of two main divisions, labor and material. By achieving maximum availability (minimum downtime) and efficiency from plant assets, a manager ensures that a company does not need to invest in excess assets to produce its products. Benchmarking is a continuous improvement tool; it should only be started if the company wants to make changes to maintenance improvement.