Dashboards, KPIs, and Portfolio Views: Making Health Visible to the People Who Act
Who this is for: Asset managers, BI leads, and Maximo configurators who need to design health dashboards that people actually use in real decisions -- not dashboards that get demoed once and forgotten.
Estimated read time: 15 minutes
🔥 The Dashboard Nobody Opened
A pharmaceutical manufacturer spent eight weeks building a comprehensive Maximo Health dashboard. Thirty-seven charts. Every metric imaginable. Health distribution by site. Risk trends by asset class. Criticality breakdown by building. Indicator-level drill-downs. Color-coded heat maps. It was beautiful.
Usage data after three months: the dashboard was opened an average of 1.4 times per week. By the same person. The system administrator checking that it was still working.
The maintenance planning meeting continued using the same Excel spreadsheet it had used for five years. The capital planning process continued using the same Word document template. The reliability review continued using the same PowerPoint slides.
"The dashboard exists. People just do not use it."
The problem was never the data. It was never the technology. It was that the dashboard was designed to display information rather than to support a decision. Nobody in the organization had a meeting where the question was: "What does Health say we should do this week?" So nobody opened the dashboard.
A dashboard that is not embedded in a decision process is not a dashboard. It is a screenshot waiting to happen.
👥 Designing for Your Audience
The single biggest mistake in health dashboard design is building one view for everyone. Different roles ask different questions. Different questions need different visualizations.
Audience 1: Executive and Leadership
Their question: "Is our asset risk getting better or worse, and where should we invest?"
What they need:
- Portfolio-level summaries -- not individual assets
- Trends over time -- not snapshots
- Clear links to business outcomes (safety, production, compliance)
- Comparisons across sites, regions, or business units
What they do NOT need:
- Individual asset health scores
- Indicator-level detail
- Technical configuration information
Design pattern:
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ENTERPRISE HEALTH SUMMARY Q1 2026 │
├──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ │
│ HEALTH DISTRIBUTION │ RISK TREND (12 MONTHS) │
│ ┌──┬──┬──┬──┐ │ High-risk assets: 47 → 31 (-34%) │
│ │██│██│░░│ │ │ ▂▃▄▅▆▇█▇▆▅▄▃ │
│ │██│██│░░│ │ │ │
│ │██│██│░░│▒▒│ │ TARGET: <25 by Q3 2026 │
│ └──┴──┴──┴──┘ │ │
│ A B C D │ │
│ (Sites) │ │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ │
│ TOP 5 RISK AREAS │ CAPITAL INVESTMENT ALIGNMENT │
│ 1. Site A Pumps │ Funded: 12 of 31 high-risk assets │
│ 2. Site C Xformers │ Unfunded gap: 19 assets │
│ 3. Site B HVAC │ Estimated cost: $4.2M │
│ 4. Site A Conveyor │ │
│ 5. Site D Compressor│ │
│ │ │
└──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘Audience 2: Maintenance and Reliability Teams
Their question: "Which assets need attention this week, and what is driving the deterioration?"
What they need:
- Prioritized asset lists ranked by risk
- Filters for site, system, asset class, and criticality
- Trend data for individual assets and asset groups
- Quick access to contributing indicators and recent events
Design pattern:
RELIABILITY TEAM DASHBOARD
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SITE A - ROTATING EQUIPMENT Updated: 15 min ago │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ HIGH-RISK ASSETS (Health < 40 AND Criticality >= High) │
│ ┌────────┬────────┬──────────┬────────┬─────────────────┐ │
│ │ Asset │ Health │ Critical │ Risk │ Top Driver │ │
│ ├────────┼────────┼──────────┼────────┼─────────────────┤ │
│ │ P-4407 │ 35 │ V.High │ CRIT │ 17 CMs in 18mo │ │
│ │ P-4419 │ 38 │ High │ CRIT │ Vibration trend │ │
│ │ C-201 │ 42 │ V.High │ HIGH │ Bearing temp │ │
│ │ P-4425 │ 45 │ High │ HIGH │ Seal condition │ │
│ │ C-205 │ 48 │ High │ HIGH │ MTBF declining │ │
│ └────────┴────────┴──────────┴────────┴─────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ [Click any row to drill into asset detail] │
│ │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ RECENTLY DETERIORATED (Dropped >10 points in 30 days) │
│ P-312: 71 → 52 | C-208: 68 → 55 | P-4430: 75 → 63 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Audience 3: Planners and Schedulers
Their question: "How should I prioritize this week's work, and are there high-risk assets with no upcoming work?"
What they need:
- Work backlog annotated with health and risk context
- List of poor/critical health assets with upcoming PMs
- Gap analysis: high-risk assets with no planned work
- Links to create or modify work orders
Design pattern:
PLANNER'S VIEW
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ WORK PRIORITY VIEW Week of Feb 19 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ BACKLOG BY RISK │
│ ██████████████████████ CRITICAL (8 WOs on 5 assets) │
│ ████████████████ HIGH (12 WOs on 9 assets) │
│ ██████████ MODERATE (15 WOs) │
│ ████ LOW (22 WOs) │
│ │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ GAPS: High-risk assets with NO upcoming work │
│ ⚠ P-4419 (Health: 38, Risk: CRITICAL) - No work planned │
│ ⚠ C-208 (Health: 55, Risk: HIGH) - PM overdue 12 days │
│ │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ UPCOMING PMs ON POOR/CRITICAL ASSETS │
│ P-4407 PM due Feb 22 | C-201 PM due Feb 25 │
│ Consider scope expansion for these PMs │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘📊 The Core KPIs
Not every metric deserves a spot on the dashboard. Focus on three categories that drive action.
Category 1: Health Distribution and Trends
KPI — What It Tells You — Update Frequency
Health band distribution — How many assets are Healthy / Watch / Poor / Critical — Weekly
Distribution trend — Is the overall portfolio improving or deteriorating — Monthly
Newly degraded count — Assets that moved to a worse band this period — Weekly
Average health by class — Which asset classes are in best/worst shape — Monthly
These KPIs answer: "How healthy is our portfolio, and is it getting better?"
Category 2: Risk Exposure
KPI — What It Tells You — Update Frequency
High-risk asset count — Number of assets in CRITICAL or HIGH risk — Weekly
Risk concentration — Where are high-risk assets concentrated (site/system) — Monthly
Top N by risk — The specific assets with highest combined risk — Weekly
Risk trend — Is total risk exposure increasing or decreasing — Monthly
These KPIs answer: "Where is our risk concentrated, and is it growing?"
Category 3: Action Effectiveness
KPI — What It Tells You — Update Frequency
Work on high-risk assets — % of maintenance effort targeting high-risk assets — Monthly
Health improvement rate — Assets that improved after intervention — Monthly
Overdue work on critical assets — High-risk assets with overdue tasks — Weekly
Gap closure — High-risk assets that moved to lower risk after action — Quarterly
These KPIs answer: "Are we acting on health insights, and is it working?"
Key insight: If you only track health distribution and risk exposure but never track action effectiveness, you are measuring the weather without measuring whether you brought an umbrella. The third category is where you prove ROI.
🔍 The Drill-Down Journey
The most important design pattern in Health dashboards is the portfolio-to-asset-to-action drill-down. Every view should enable navigation deeper.
Level 1: Portfolio
"Show me health and risk across my sites and asset classes."
- Aggregated charts, summary KPIs, comparison views
- Click on a segment (e.g., "Poor health at Site A") to drill down
Level 2: Asset List
"Show me the specific assets in this group, ranked by risk."
- Filtered, sortable list with health score, criticality, risk, top driver
- Click on an asset to see its full profile
Level 3: Asset Detail
"Show me everything about this asset's health -- what is driving the score?"
- Overall health score with component breakdown
- Indicator values and trends
- Criticality rating and rationale
- Recent work history, inspections, meter trends
- Active and planned work orders
Level 4: Action
"Let me do something about it."
- Create inspection or work order
- Add to capital planning review list
- Flag for next planning meeting discussion
- Adjust PM frequency or scope
DRILL-DOWN JOURNEY
PORTFOLIO ────> ASSET LIST ────> ASSET DETAIL ────> ACTION
"42 assets "P-4407 is "Vibration is "Create
in Poor the worst. the driver. inspection
health at 17 CMs in Score dropped WO for
Site A" 18 months" 15 points in next week"
30 days"If any link in this chain is broken -- if users cannot drill from portfolio to asset, or from asset detail to work order -- the dashboard fails its purpose.
🔗 Aligning with Existing Metrics
Health dashboards should complement, not compete with, your existing maintenance and reliability KPIs.
Bridge to Traditional KPIs
Health KPI — Traditional KPI — Connection
Health distribution improving — OEE trending up — Healthier assets perform better
High-risk count declining — MTBF increasing — Fewer at-risk assets = fewer failures
Work targeting high-risk assets — Reactive/preventive mix shifting — Risk-based work replaces reactive
Health improving after intervention — MTTR stable or declining — Effective interventions = faster recovery
Show these connections explicitly. When the VP asks "what has Health done for us?", the answer is: "MTBF on critical pumps increased 22% since we started using health-based prioritization. Here is the trend."
Embed in Existing Processes
The most successful Health implementations we have seen do not create new meetings. They inject health data into existing ones:
- Weekly planning meeting: Open with the high-risk asset list. Use it to prioritize the week's work.
- Monthly reliability review: Show health trends alongside failure and downtime metrics. Identify which improvement actions are working.
- Quarterly capital review: Present ranked replacement candidates with health, risk, and cost data. Use the portfolio view as the primary input.
- Annual budget planning: Show projected risk reduction from proposed investments. Use health trend data to justify the budget.
"We tried to create a 'Health review meeting.' Nobody came. Then we put the Health dashboard on the screen during the existing planning meeting. Now everyone uses it."
🚫 Dashboard Anti-Patterns
The Data Dump
37 charts, every metric, no hierarchy. Users are overwhelmed and find nothing. Fix: Three to five charts per view. One question per dashboard.
The Pretty but Useless
Beautiful visualizations disconnected from any decision process. Gets demoed at conferences. Never opened in production. Fix: Define the decision before designing the dashboard.
The Real-Time Obsession
Everything updates every 30 seconds. Users see scores flickering. Anxiety increases. Trust decreases. Fix: Update frequency should match decision frequency. Executives need monthly trends, not real-time blinking.
The Island Dashboard
Health dashboards that live in a different tool from where work gets planned. Users must context-switch between systems. Friction kills adoption. Fix: Integrate health views into Maximo Manage workflows wherever possible.
🎯 The 7 Commandments of Health Dashboards
- Thou shalt design for the decision, not the data. Start with "what question does this answer?" not "what data can I show?"
- Thou shalt build role-specific views. Executives, reliability engineers, and planners need different things. Give them different views.
- Thou shalt enable drill-down. Portfolio to asset list to asset detail to action. Every link must work.
- Thou shalt embed in existing processes. Inject Health into weekly planning, not into a new meeting nobody attends.
- Thou shalt track action effectiveness. Health distribution and risk exposure are inputs. Action metrics are outputs. Track both.
- Thou shalt keep it simple. Five meaningful charts beat 37 pretty ones. Every time.
- Thou shalt measure dashboard usage. If nobody opens it, something is wrong. Find out what and fix it.
Next in the series: Part 7 -- Automation, Work Management, and Use Cases shows how health scores drive actual work -- from triggering inspections to adjusting PM frequencies to feeding capital plans.
About TheMaximoGuys: We help Maximo developers and teams build, configure, and optimize IBM Maximo Application Suite. Our content comes from real implementations, not marketing slides. If it is in our blog, we have done it in production.
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