Contributing Editors 

A machine at DeKing Precision caught fire. The fire suppression system did its job, but refilling it cost thousands of dollars. Then it happened again. When the team finally traced the cause, they found clogged oil lines and metal chips packed into the hoses — the kind of thing a simple recurring check would have caught.

That is the story small manufacturers know all too well, even if the details differ. A missed preventive maintenance task doesn’t look serious today. But when a shop is already running lean, it doesn’t stay small. It can become downtime. Downtime can become a late order. A late order can become a lost customer. And poor maintenance documentation can put vendor status at risk.

That is why maintenance can no longer be treated only as a cost. It is a profit center — not because maintenance creates revenue on its own, but because it protects the revenue a shop has already sold. When machines run, jobs move. When jobs move, customers get parts on time. And when customers get parts on time, trust — and revenue — stay protected.

The Real Problem Isn’t Effort — It’s Scattered Information

After speaking with more than 200 small manufacturers across the United States, one pattern showed up again and again: these shops were not ignoring maintenance. They were busy, practical, and doing the best they could with the tools on hand — whiteboards, spreadsheets, binders, OEM manuals, clipboards, ERP notes, and a lot of tribal knowledge.

That works, until it doesn’t. Until the shop gets busier. Until an audit date gets closer. Until a customer asks for proof. Until one missed task turns into a production problem.

The issue is rarely effort. It’s that maintenance information lives in too many places at once — a task buried in a 300-page OEM manual, a service interval sitting in a binder, a machine’s history living mostly in someone’s memory, a compliance record nobody can find when an auditor asks for it. In a small manufacturing business, that kind of scatter turns into cost very quickly.

Most machines already come with the information needed to maintain them properly — it’s built into the OEM manual. The problem is that the manual is long, technical, and disconnected from daily life on the shop floor. The requirements are correct; they just haven’t been turned into scheduled tasks, assigned work, completed records, and proof. Getting there doesn’t have to be complicated: upload the manual, pull out the maintenance requirements, build the schedule, track the work, and keep the documentation. That’s the foundation of a plan-first approach to maintenance.

As Greg Christensen points out, that foundation is really just the starting line: “You may then optimize preventive maintenance moving forward, for your specific machines in your environment, to go beyond the OEM maintenance specifications.”

Why the Repair Bill Isn’t the Real Cost

Every shop owner can see the cost of a breakdown — the part, the service invoice, the technician’s time. The bigger cost is harder to see: delayed jobs, overtime, rushed parts, missed production windows, scrap, rework, frustrated customers, and in some cases, vendor status on the line.

That’s why maintenance is better discussed in financial terms. The question isn’t “how much does maintenance cost?” It’s “how much revenue does maintenance protect?” For a small manufacturer, the answer can be significant.

A Real Shop’s Maintenance Journey: DeKing Precision

DeKing Precision is a precision machine shop where uptime matters every day. As owner Dave DeVandry explained during a recent industry webinar, his shop had been struggling with production, machine performance, and maintenance consistency. His father, who had run the shop for decades, came in and quickly spotted the core issue: “My machines were not being maintained properly.”

DeKing didn’t need another complicated ERP module, or a tool too cumbersome for the team to actually use day to day. They needed something simple enough to implement and practical enough for the shop floor — a way to upload machine manuals, pull out the maintenance requirements, decide what applied, and get moving. Dave described the rollout plainly: “MROPLAN we implemented in two weeks.”

As industry maintenance veteran Greg Christensen of CMMSradio often points out, this is where a lot of shops go wrong — treating a CMMS rollout as a software purchase instead of a change in process. Success isn’t about the software alone; it’s about people, process, culture, and adoption. A system only works if the team actually uses it, and it needs to fit the shop floor rather than the other way around.

That’s exactly what played out at DeKing. The fire-suppression incident became part of the plan rather than a one-off scare — after the second event, the team built the oil-line and hose checks into their recurring maintenance schedule. As Dave put it: “You don’t have to be perfect to start with. You’re always going to make changes to this and make it better and better.” That’s what practical maintenance improvement looks like in practice — not a perfect system on day one, but a structure that helps a shop learn and adjust.

Why Uptime Hits the Bottom Line Directly

For a precision shop, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience — it touches production, quality, scrap, delivery, and customer confidence all at once. Dave put it directly: “We hold really tight tolerances. If my machines are not tip-top, then I’m not going to be able to hold that quality to my customers.” And the financial impact follows close behind: “I’m losing money on scrap parts, I’m losing money on downtime, I’m losing money on having to sort through parts. It’s a massive problem.”

That’s maintenance as a profit center in practice. It isn’t just about keeping a machine clean or checking a box — it’s about protecting production capacity, quality, delivery, and margin all at once.

Compliance and Vendor Status

For many small manufacturers, maintenance documentation is increasingly tied to compliance — ISO, AS9100, customer audits, and supplier reviews are all becoming more common, even for smaller shops. The trouble is that many shops scramble when the audit shows up: pulling clipboards, updating spreadsheets, hunting for backup, trying to prove work that may have been done but was never properly recorded.

Dave described the difference clearly: “Now I can show them MROPLAN and show them the maintenance that we’re checking off.” That matters because vendor status isn’t only about making good parts — it’s about proving the systems behind production are controlled, documented, and reliable. For small manufacturers, solid maintenance records can be the difference in protecting both customer confidence and supplier standing.

The Real ROI: Capacity, Not Just Repair Savings

Maintenance ROI usually gets framed as reduced repair cost, and that’s part of it. But for small manufacturers, the bigger return is often reclaimed capacity. When machines are available, a shop produces more reliably. When production is reliable, revenue is protected. When delivery is reliable, customers stay confident.

To put rough numbers on it: a typical small-shop platform cost runs around $20 per machine per month, and at an average of roughly 4.4 machines per plant, that’s about $1,000 a year. Against that modest cost, shops report a meaningfully larger reclaimable revenue opportunity from avoided downtime and protected capacity — the exact number varies shop to shop, but the principle holds. Downtime is expensive. Missed production is expensive. Lost customers and lost vendor status are expensive. Planned maintenance protects the revenue engine underneath all of it.

Five Practical Steps to Get Started

A small manufacturer can start improving maintenance without overcomplicating the process:

1. List the critical machines in the shop.
2. Collect what already exists — OEM manuals, SOPs, service notes, and any existing maintenance records.
3. Identify the gaps — the preventive tasks and intervals that are currently missed or inconsistently tracked.
4. Turn requirements into a schedule — assign tasks by machine.
5. Keep proof that the work was completed.

Once a shop has that structure in place, maintenance becomes easier to manage, easier to prove, and easier to connect to the bottom line.

Final Thought

The coming manufacturing boom will create real opportunity for small manufacturers — but it will also expose weak systems. A missed PM that looks harmless today can become downtime tomorrow. Downtime can become a late order. A late order can become a lost customer. And poor documentation can put vendor status at risk.

Small manufacturers don’t need maintenance software for the sake of software. They need a practical way to protect production, turn OEM manuals into action, stay ahead of breakdowns, and protect customer delivery and vendor status. That’s the shift: stop thinking about maintenance only as a cost, and start thinking about it as a profit center. Stop managing work orders. Start managing plans.

Sources / References

MROPLAN.ai internal content provided by John Gabriel: Posts 1–10 on maintenance as a profit center, ROI, downtime, margin protection, reclaimable capacity, and SMB maintenance planning.

MROPLAN.ai / REVSquared webinar deck: “MROplan_Webinar_QA.pptx (2).pdf” Used for the North American manufacturing growth framing, SMB manufacturer opportunity, virtual plant manager positioning, hidden downtime cost framing, DeKing Precision case study, and maintenance ROI model.

MROPLAN.ai webinar transcript: “Pasted text.txt” Used for Dave DeVandry / DeKing Precision examples, implementation comments, fire suppression story, tight tolerance comments, audit readiness discussion, ISO/vendor status discussion, and shop-floor workflow.

Greg Christensen LinkedIn profile / uploaded source: “Profile (42).pdf” Used for Greg Christensen’s CMMSradio role, CMMS SME positioning, a CMMS co-founder background, CMMS consulting background, and maintenance/facilities/SaaS expertise.

CMMSradio: https://cmmsradio.com/ — a podcast that talks about All Things CMMS.

Industrial Talk — Greg Christensen with CMMSradio: https://industrialtalk.com/episodes/greg-christensen-with-cmmsradio/

Industrial Talk — Greg Christensen with CMMSradio Podcast: https://industrialtalk.com/episodes/greg-christensen-with-cmmsradio-podcast/

Accendo Reliability — How CMMS Adds Value within Maintenance & Reliability plus Human Stuff: https://accendoreliability.com/podcast/cmmsradio/how-cmms-adds-value-within-maintenance-reliability-plus-human-stuff/

Accendo Reliability — Optimizing CMMS for Reliability while Getting Team and Leadership Buy-In: https://accendoreliability.com/podcast/cmmsradio/cr061-optimizing-cmms-for-reliability-while-getting-team-and-leadership-buy-in/

ARC Facilities — Building Bridges: The Role of Communication in Facilities: https://www.arcfacilities.com/podcast/building-bridges-the-role-of-communication-in-facilities

EasyRCA — CMMSradio’s Greg Christensen on CMMS Rollouts & RCA: https://easyrca.com/blog/cmms-lessons-greg-christensen/

Podscan / CMMSradio — Your Assets Thrive on Basic Maintenance: https://podscan.fm/podcasts/cmmsradio/episodes/your-assets-thrive-on-basic-maintenance-streamline-2026-cmmsradio-panel-discussion

National Association of Manufacturers — Manufacturing in the United States: https://nam.org/mfgdata/

National Association of Manufacturers — Facts About Manufacturing: https://nam.org/mfgdata/facts-about-manufacturing-expanded/

National Association of Manufacturers — Power of Small: https://nam.org/power-of-small-v2/

U.S. Census Bureau — County Business Patterns, Manufacturing NAICS 31-33: https://data.census.gov/table/CBP2023.CB2300CBP?codeset=naics~31-33&g=010XX00US

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada — Key Small Business Statistics 2025: https://www.ised-isde.canada.ca/site/sme-research-statistics/en/key-small-business-statistics/key-small-business-statistics-2025

McKinsey Global Institute — Ramping up manufacturing in America: https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/ramping-up-manufacturing-in-america