Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a new maturity model to identify the current state of maintenance area of organizations and drives actions to increase efficiency and effectiveness toward the concept known as world-class. Design/methodology/approach The model was developed based on an extensive literature review on maintenance management and maturity assessment, which allowed identifying the relevant factors in maintenance management and the world-class behaviors for each factor. The progressive maturity levels for each of the identified ten factors form the model. To test its effectiveness, it was applied to the maintenance area of three companies. Findings The model application showed that, in addition to being a self-assessment tool, it provides knowledge, to those who use it, on behaviors or practices that enable world-class results. For each factor, potential gaps and the desired state were defined focusing on behaviors rather than on indicators values or adopted methodologies, which facilitates the identification of improvement actions that lead to better performance. Research limitations/implications Through its use, maturity levels can be identified for all considered maintenance management factors, however, the overall maturity of the maintenance area is not determined. Although this overall evaluation can be done assigning a weight to each factor, it was not considered an added value for the set purpose. Originality/value The proposed maturity model contributes to the understanding of the maintenance management process and how to stand out nowadays in an area that has an increasingly important impact on productivity and quality.