Creating a Weekly Schedule

How Many Flow Charts Have You Seen Just Like This?

There could be lots of colorful boxes; plus lots of emphasis on work order planning. But when you look closely, there is just one box for work scheduling. Is it really this simple? Why is it so few have a weekly maintenance schedule?

A Typical Work Management Process Flow Chart

The assumption is that everyone knows what work scheduling entails and no further details are required, similar to magic, it just happens. It comes down to the definition of scheduling. If your definition is a list of work, then yes, many will have just that. This is where they run a query of all open work and give that to the service organization (or maintenance department) letting them choose exactly what work should be done next week. Or, if your definition is 5 daily plans created in advance of the week start, then that approach becomes the other extreme which ends up with daily plans that are inaccurate due to (1) slippage in work and (2) any emergent work which happens mid-week. Or, in some cases, the stakeholders only treat the PM work as the official weekly schedule whereby repair work is treated as fill-in. Lastly, some sites generate PM work orders all on a monthly basis (same date) which makes it impossible to create a weekly schedule.

Planning and Scheduling are Different Topics but Often Merged

Most asset-intensive organizations recognize that strong planning and scheduling is a prerequisite to operational excellence. And if properly implemented this advanced process can improve work force productivity, optimize backlog reduction, promote safety and enhance reliability. There are many articles on the intricacies of maintenance planning but it is the creation of the weekly maintenance schedule where challenges exist.

As a discipline, planning and scheduling are usually mentioned together. But the fact is, they are separate topics. Further, most conversations just focus on maintenance planning. Work order planning, although complex, is rather straight forward compared to advance scheduling. More to the point, weekly scheduling as a value-add process within the CMMS, is often a missed opportunity. Seldom is there an organized attempt to improve backlog management, work prioritization, or craft coordination other than to say, “Here are the PM work orders generated from the CMMS”.

There is no question that work order planning is a special talent which requires a comprehensive knowledge in the trades, job safety and backlog management. But it is equally hard to establish a system that provides a true automated weekly schedule such that any size organization can easily generate this output. 

Very Few Organizations Have a Weekly Maintenance Schedule

You would think they would because this is an industry best practice. But as an advanced process there can be a lot of challenges. Unfortunately, many take short cuts and just select a bunch of work orders for the week. Or, they might use electronic workflow to quickly push work directly to the maintenance staff - but end up losing control of the work. Some even say to the service organization, “Here is a list of all open work and choose what you want for next week”.

For those that do manage to create a weekly schedule there is usually a heavy reliance on subjective selection which is often biased and lacks fair prioritization. Basically, it is a “gut feel” by the maintenance supervisor. The effort to create this manual schedule is a time-consuming process that produces a one-time result, which cannot be easily replicated as necessary during a weekly schedule review meeting, where refinements are expected.

The ideal process is shown below.

The RLP is a program inside the CMMS. It reads (1) craft availability, (2) work order backlog, (3) the craft estimates - rough or formal, and the (4) WO backlog ranking. This program produces a set of work. The ranking value comes from a risk-based WO matrix - updated nightly.

Note: Automated Scheduling Does Not Mean 5 Daily Plans

There is confusion in the asset management community as to definitions. A weekly schedule is simply a set of work for the week, created in advance of the week. This set of work will be given to the planners to create fully planned work packages. Once fully planned, this set of work is taken to an O&M review meeting where the schedule is issued.

The daily plans are a subset of this weekly schedule and would be created just prior to each shift start - by the maintenance supervisor.

Why is that?

A daily plan includes scheduled work from the weekly schedule, and, it includes any emergent work (from the last 24 hours). If you create 5 daily plans in advance of week start (like some add-on products recommend) then you will be caught up in a (scheduling) rework situation, which is not efficient. Plus, it is quite natural for jobs to slip (or be finished early) during the week which means these advance daily plans will require multiple changes to staff assignments including date/time starts.

Just because the add-on scheduling software (as told by vendor sales staff) can "automate the generation of 5 daily plans" in advance of the week (including worker assignments), doesn't mean you should do this. Nor is it a best practice.