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01  /  Headquarters — Birmingham, AL
01 / SERVICES

Maintenance is engineered. The three pillars of one continuous practice.

Maintenance Design Group works across Assess, Design, and Sustain as a single method — measurement first, architecture second, partnership third. We do not hand off between teams, and we never sell a platform. Every engagement is staffed by a senior principal engineer from day one through closeout.

Book a Reliability Diagnostic See measured outcomes ↓
Headquartered Birmingham, AL · Est. 2007 Engineers 86 staff · 75+ CMRP/CRL/CMSE Reach 612 sites · 41 states · 9 countries
02 / METHODOLOGY

Measured outcomes, not promises.

Across 612 industrial sites and 47 Fortune 1000 engagements, typical programs produce the following ranges, verified by client-side audits — never by our own marketing.

OEE LIFT
8–14pts
Inside 12 months on multi-plant programs, measured against MDG Reliability Maturity Index baselines.
UNPLANNED DOWNTIME
−40 to −60%
Reduction across critical asset classes within 18 months of a Sustain engagement.
VERIFIED ROI
5.8×/ 18 mo
Average engagement ROI audited by the client's own finance team, across the 2018–2024 cohort.
Ranges, not guarantees — see Case Studies for anonymized audit summaries.
03 / ASSESS

Assess. Every engagement begins with a measurement.

The MDG Reliability Maturity Index is the diagnostic front door. We do not write a strategy until we have instrumented the program against an external benchmark — drawn from 600+ plants across North America — and quantified the gap between current state and target.

  1. 01

    MDG Reliability Maturity Index Baseline

    A 6–8 week on-site benchmark covering work execution, planning & scheduling, condition monitoring, materials, and leadership. Delivered as a 1–5 maturity score per workstream with peer-cohort percentile ranking. The Index is the same instrument we have applied across 600+ plants since 2009.

    • Maturity Index scorecard (per workstream & per site)
    • Pareto of the top 8 loss drivers
    • Peer-cohort percentile ranking
  2. 02

    Failure Modes & Criticality Analysis

    FMECA on the top decile of revenue-critical assets. Output is a ranked risk register with failure-mode consequences, RPN scores, and recommended detection methods — the input document for every subsequent design decision.

    • Ranked asset criticality register
    • RPN-scored failure-mode register
    • Detection- method gap list (vibration, thermography, oil analysis, ultrasonic)
  3. 03

    Work-Execution Gap Analysis

    Time-and-motion observation of the maintenance backlog, wrench-time studies, and a CMMS data-quality audit. We measure plan attainment, schedule compliance, and PM compliance against the same definitions used in the MDG Index — not vendor-supplied KPIs.

    • Wrench-time & backlog age distribution
    • CMMS data-quality scorecard (12 dimensions)
    • Plan / schedule / PM compliance baseline
  4. 04

    Business Case & Roadmap

    Findings consolidated into a defensible business case with sensitivity analysis and a phased 18-month roadmap. The business case is the document your CFO and operating committee will see — written by engineers, in finance language, with audited assumptions.

    • 18-month phased roadmap
    • NPV model with sensitivity bands
    • Investment-vs-return chart for committee review
Book the Assess Diagnostic Typical duration: 6–8 weeks. Fixed scope, fixed fee.
04 / DESIGN

Design. A documented architecture, not a slide deck.

The Design pillar produces the engineering artifacts your program will run on for the next decade. Every document is ISO 55000-aligned, CMMS-agnostic, and reviewed by a senior principal engineer with at least 15 years of practitioner experience.

  1. 01

    ISO 55000-Aligned Program Architecture

    A documented asset-management system spanning strategy, organization, people, process, technology, and risk. Aligned clause-by-clause to ISO 55001, audited annually by DNV against the same structure used for ISO 9001:2015 — a standard MDG has held continuously since 2014.

    • Asset-management policy & strategy
    • Clause-mapped objectives & KPIs
    • DNV-auditable governance structure
  2. 02

    CMMS / EAM Data Model Design

    Equipment hierarchy, failure-code taxonomies, PM task library, and KPI definitions. Vendor-neutral — we deliver the same model whether you run SAP PM, Maximo, Infor EAM, or a modern cloud platform. Data-model governance is handed to your team, with the rationale documented in plain English.

    • Equipment hierarchy & class structure
    • Failure-code & cause-code taxonomy
    • PM task library & KPI definitions
  3. 03

    Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)

    RCM analyses on critical asset classes — applied to the same criticality register produced in Assess. Output is a per-asset PM strategy with explicit Proactive, Reactive, and Redesign decisions, reviewed by operations, maintenance, and engineering stakeholders.

    • Per-asset PM strategy decisions
    • Condition-monitoring task specifications
    • Failure-finding interval justifications
  4. 04

    Maintainability-by-Design (Capital Projects)

    The only U.S. firm embedding ISO 55000 requirements into greenfield facility design from the PID stage. We work alongside your EPC and controls teams to ensure maintainability, accessibility, and instrumentation are capital-project deliverables — not afterthoughts handed back to operations.

    • Maintainability review at 30/60/90% design
    • P&ID maintainability annotations
    • Capital-project maintainability index
Scope a Design engagement Typical duration: 4–6 months. Issued as a fixed-fee contract.
05 / SUSTAIN

Sustain. Long-horizon partnership with named senior engineers.

Sustain is not a managed-service contract with rotating analyst pools. It is a multi-year partnership with the same senior principal engineers who built the program in Design, accountable to your operating committee on a quarterly cadence. 98% of clients on multi-year managed reliability programs since 2018 have renewed.

  1. 01

    Embedded Senior Principal Engineers

    Each Sustain engagement is staffed by 1–3 senior principal engineers with a minimum of 15 years of practitioner experience — never junior staff, never offshore analyst handoffs. Your principal engineer attends your operating committee, owns the maturity scorecard, and is accountable by name.

    • Named senior principal engineer on the engagement
    • Quarterly operating-committee review
    • Single point of accountability — no rotation
  2. 02

    KPI Governance & Quarterly Maturity Recalibration

    12 standard KPIs — including plan attainment, schedule compliance, PM compliance, MTBF, MTTR, and cost per unit produced — recalibrated quarterly against the MDG Reliability Maturity Index. Movement in maturity score is the single most important deliverable to your executive team.

    • 12-KPI governance dashboard
    • Quarterly Maturity Index recalibration
    • Peer-cohort benchmarking refresh
  3. 03

    Continuous Improvement Workstreams

    Targeted workstreams selected each quarter from the highest-leverage gap on the maturity scorecard — precision maintenance, lubrication excellence, operator-driven reliability, planning & scheduling maturity, or root-cause analysis discipline. Each workstream has an owner, a target, and a date.

    • Quarterly workstream selection & charter
    • Targeted improvement plans
    • Workstream closeout & benefit capture
  4. 04

    Independent Multi-Year Audits

    At year one and year three, an independent third-party audit validates maturity movement and financial benefit capture. We commission the audit; your finance team owns the scope. The audit report is yours to share with your board — anonymized benchmarks across our 600+ plants are available under NDA.

    • Independent third-party maturity audit
    • Client-side financial benefit audit
    • Anonymized peer-cohort comparison
Discuss a Sustain partnership Typical duration: multi-year. 98% client retention since 2018.