Glossary

MTTR (mean time to repair)

In short

MTTR, mean time to repair, measures how long it takes on average to restore an asset to service after a failure. It is calculated by dividing total repair time by the number of repairs over a period. A lower MTTR means faster recovery, and tracking it helps you find where downtime is being lost between a breakdown and the fix.

MTTR (mean time to repair)

MTTR, or mean time to repair, measures how long it takes on average to restore an asset to working order after a failure. Where MTBF tells you how often an asset breaks, MTTR tells you how quickly you recover when it does. A lower MTTR means less downtime per failure, which for a busy operator can matter as much as how often equipment fails in the first place.

How MTTR is calculated

The calculation mirrors MTBF but focuses on repair time rather than running time:

  • MTTR equals total repair time divided by the number of repairs.

So if an asset needed 8 hours of repair work spread across 4 failures, its MTTR is 2 hours. The headline number is easy; the care is in the definition. Some teams count only the hands-on repair time, the spanner-in-hand work. Others count the full elapsed time from the moment an asset fails to the moment it is back in service, which folds in diagnosis, waiting for parts and waiting for a contractor. Both are valid, but they answer different questions, so the important thing is to choose one definition and apply it consistently.

What MTTR tells you

A high or rising MTTR points to friction in your recovery, and the friction is often not the repair itself. It can be slow diagnosis, parts that were not in stock, or a contractor who could not be assigned quickly. Breaking MTTR down into those stages usually shows where the time is really going, which is where the improvement is.

How it relates to Cohiva Control

Cohiva Control captures the work-order lifecycle on a server-enforced state machine, moving through open, assigned, in progress, pending parts, completed and verified, with every transition written to an append-only history row. That timeline is exactly what a maintenance team needs to understand its repair times: when a job was raised, when it was assigned, when it stalled waiting for parts, and when it was completed and verified. Parts are tracked with reorder points, which directly affects the waiting-for-parts portion of any repair, and the contractor-compliance gate ensures the contractor you assign is actually eligible to do the work.

Part of the Cohiva platform

Cohiva Control is part of the Cohiva platform. Leisure operators often run it with Cohiva Complex, and finance teams connect it to Cohiva Crunch for the general ledger. Explore the platform at www.cohiva.app.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate MTTR?
Divide the total time spent repairing an asset by the number of repairs in that period. For example, 8 hours of repair across 4 failures gives an MTTR of 2 hours.
Does MTTR include waiting for parts?
It depends on how you define it. Some teams measure only hands-on repair time; others include the full time from breakdown to back-in-service, which captures waiting for parts or a contractor. Pick one definition and stay consistent.
How is MTTR different from MTBF?
MTTR measures how quickly you restore an asset after it fails, a maintainability figure. MTBF measures how long the asset runs before it fails, a reliability figure. Reading them together shows both how often things break and how fast you recover.