How to Schedule Maintenance

The purpose of any P&S system should be to eliminate delays in the maintenance process and coordinate the schedules of the maintenance resources and the production schedule. All jobs are not good candidates for planning. Very simple jobs normally would not go through the planning process, as little value is added. Additionally, jobs that have low predictability are not good candidates, since a planner would be unable to accurately predict the job’s resource and part needs.

Every organization involved in a P&S effort should identify the jobs that should not be planned. However, all jobs are good candidates for scheduling as long as a reasonable time estimate can be made.

As far as P&S is concerned, work, basically, is either urgent or nonurgent. This sounds simple enough, urgent work must be attended to without delay, whereas nonurgent work allows taking the time required to plan and schedule it if a tremendous savings can be created, and that is the ultimate goal of P&S.

Urgent work is fraught with delays, misdirection, and confusion; but by its very nature, we cannot take the time to investigate the needs of the job, estimate the resources, develop a plan, and obtain the necessary parts. Instead, we run headlong into the fray and figure out what we need as we go. Sometimes, we have to back up and try a different route.

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The Maintenance Scheduling Process is simple if you follow the "Intercept Ranking Model" - Scheduling work orders based on Asset Criticality and Defect (how long before it fails) Severity.

Does your current organization have a Proactive Maintenance Planner/Scheduler?

Assess if your Maintenance Planning and Scheduling is in alignment with known Best Practices.

1. Is someone responsible for scheduling, either a full-time maintenance scheduler or full-time planner/scheduler?

2. Do planner/schedulers or schedulers work closely with production to schedule maintenance work?

3. Is maintenance work scheduled one week ahead at least?

4. Is maintenance work scheduled by day by hour?

5. Is maintenance work scheduled with a maintenance person’s name assigned?

6. On large outages do maintenance personnel provide input into the schedule?

7. Does the scheduler or planner/scheduler facilitate the maintenance scheduling meeting?

8. Does the scheduler or planner/scheduler not report to maintenance supervision? Reporting to a maintenance manager is acceptable.

9. Is next week’s schedule posted at least the prior Friday for all to view to include maintenance and production?

10. Is schedule compliance above 80%?

Total “yes” answers times 10 = (possible 100 points)

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A properly designed and executed planning and scheduling system can be the most effective means of increasing Maintenance Wrench-Time (hands on tool time)

Defining Roles and Responsibilities in the Maintenance Scheduling is critical to ensure everyone is aligned ensuring Maintenance Scheduling.

How do you create a RACI Chart? Simple, Follow these steps:

1. Have a simple process map of the process to use as a guide

2. Invite all stakeholders in this process, ie. Production manager, maintenance supervisor, maintenance planner, stores manager, safety, reliability engineering

3. Focus on the process map and identify each person’s role in it.

R – Responsible (the doer – could be multiple positions)

A – Accountable (the buck stops here – one person only)

C – Consulted (two-way communication)

I – Informed (one-way communication – no reply expected nor accepted)

4. Focus all scheduling meetings around the subject on the RACI – patience is required

5. After success is achieved move to the next process using these steps.

Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Increases Wrench-Time Example

6. Publishing the schedule on the the last day for the following week so that everyone can see what work is coming up the following week and keep the schedule posted for the week scheduled.

I hope this provides you with a little insight as to what effective maintenance scheduling looks like. This process was created by the first plant in the World certified as having a "World Class Maintenance Organization".

Checkout my upcoming workshop on "Maintenance Planning and Scheduling" --- June 22-24, 2021