How to sell planning and scheduling to your CEO

Note: This is a shorter version of our in-depth article on How to Sell Planning & Scheduling to your CEO?

Planning and Scheduling is one of the biggest improvements you can make in your journey to reliability. But it doesn’t come easy. Because for most organisations, you first need to get approvals from senior management before you can implement anything.?

So the question is: how are you going to sell the benefits of maintenance planning & scheduling to your management??

Before you try to pitch work management to your CEO… you first have to put yourself in their shoes.??

What’s in it for them??

Maintenance planning and scheduling has a great Return On Investment (ROI)?

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Any CEO worth his salt should be interested in the benefits maintenance planning & scheduling will bring to his operations:?

• Work management will result in productivity improvement, which reduces costs.?
• Effective maintenance planning and scheduling reduces emergency work. And Emergency work has been shown to cost 3-4 times that of well-planned and scheduled work. So more cost savings.?
• Good work and productivity management will reduce equipment downtime so it increases production. More production means more profit.?
• And the stable working environment that comes with planning & scheduling is better for safety.?

In short, there is a massive return on investment for implementing maintenance planning and scheduling. Few maintenance improvements drive so much benefit for so little upfront investment.?

And it is relatively easy to demonstrate the benefits up front. There are plenty of case studies, benchmarks, and literature sources available to back up your claims.?

It should be an easy pitch really.?

But somehow it seldom is. And frequently the message is lost in translation. That is a loss for you and a loss for your CEO – even if he doesn’t know it.?

So here‘s a step-by-step framework to help you sell maintenance planning and scheduling to your CEO.?

Step 1 – Highlight the problem: low productivity?

It's likely that your CEO hasn't been in the shop floor for a while, so it's important to make it simple for him to see the problem: the waste, and the lost value. The actual hands-on productive time of a typical maintenance worker is around 20% to 30%, with waste occurring in various forms.??

To assess your productivity problem, identify all forms of waste and calculate your wrench time. Use a simple Wrench Time Calculator (MS Excel) to calculate your productivity. Keep it simple and credible, and don't go overboard.??

Step 2 – Explain the solution: Maintenance Planning & Scheduling?

Once you have completed Step 1 you’ll know your typical wrench time. And you’ll have an idea of how big your productivity problem is. It’s typical for a well-functioning work management system to have a current wrench time of 30% and you aim to increase it to 45%.??

When you show your CEO that your current wrench time is 30% and explain your aim to bring it to 45%, you’ll need to talk him through the basics of effective planning and scheduling.??

Maintenance planning and scheduling aims to ensure the right work gets done at the right place and time, with the right tools, materials, and people, with minimal waste.??

You need to emphasize that maintenance planning and scheduling is a business process that requires people to work in specific roles, such as planners or schedulers.??

But reinforce that you don't necessarily need more people. Simply by changing the way you work, you will get more out of your existing staff.??

Step 3 – Demonstrate the value of Maintenance Planning & Scheduling?

At this point, you have clearly explained that you have a productivity problem. And you’ll have also explained that there is a well-established, robust process to help you improve your wrench time.?

But that won’t be enough for your CEO.?

You need to show him the money.?

Don’t stick to generic benchmarks. Instead, calculate the value work management will bring to your organisation. Show him how you will improve his bottom line.?

So how do you do that??

First, download our Wrench Time Calculator and enter your current wrench time, which we assumed was 30%.??

Set a target wrench time of 45%. Benchmarking and industry experience show that effective maintenance planning and scheduling can increase your wrench time to 45%.??

Next, calculate your current productive hours without work management based on your existing crew size. And then calculate your productivity once you put in place work management and have dedicated planners and schedulers in your team.??

The difference is your productivity improvement or productivity gain.?

With planning and scheduling, the company can achieve a 35% increase in productivity without recruiting additional staff. This 35% productivity improvement equates to 5040 hours of extra work done per year, which is worth over $500,000 per year.??

And for large sites or organizations with potentially hundreds of technicians, they can create over $6 million worth of value each and every year.??

This is the way to sell work management to your CEO by showing him the money.?

Step 4 – Summarize the costs and benefits??

You now have clearly demonstrated the value planning and scheduling will bring to your organisation. But as I said in the introduction: planning & scheduling doesn’t come for free.?

It will take time and money to implement, something we’ll talk about in detail in another article.?

When pulling the estimate together to implement planning and scheduling think about:?

• The time and resources you need to define and document the new process?
• The effort involved in cleaning up your CMMS. And possibly implementing some modifications to your CMMS to enable the new workflow (e.g. work order statuses, reports)?
• The time and resources you need to train all the staff in the new processes?
• What it will take to coach your teams and ensure the ways of working are sustained and become the normal way of doing things?
• And finally, you need to allow time for the overall project management to implement these changes. Change management efforts should be a big part of this.?

Once you have the total picture of the costs, time and resources involved summarize it and compare it to the value planning & scheduling will bring.?

You should see a payback within 12 months.?

Step 5 – Close the sale?

With all the groundwork done you now need to create the opportunity to sell this to your CEO and other stakeholders.?

Prepare a simple presentation using the graphs and data you generated using the wrench time calculator.?

Don’t kid yourself.?

You only have a few minutes to pitch this and only one chance, so you need to get it right.?

Keep the message simple, effective, and short.?

Focus on the bottom line benefits, avoid jargon and enjoy the opportunity.?

Sow the seed with your CEO and other stakeholders that this is a change forever – not just a once-off program.?

That planning and scheduling is an Essential Step on The Road to Reliability.?

Good luck and let us know how it goes!?

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways we can help you on your Road to Reliability:

1. Want to train your team on how to improve your plant's maintenance reliability?

Enroll your team in one of our most popular online training courses:

Implementing Maintenance Planning and Scheduling—increase your maintenance workforce by 35% without hiring anyone. Reduce costs, improve safety and increase morale.

Developing and Improving Preventive Maintenance Programs—achieve higher reliability and availability whilst doing less maintenance. Acquire the knowledge and tools needed to create a highly effective and efficient Preventive Maintenance Program.

2. Want to know how effective your Planning & Scheduling really is?

Use our Planning & Scheduling Scorecard?to assess your performance and receive a personalised PDF report with recommendations on how to improve.

Use our Wrench Time Calculator?to easily calculate how much value your organisation is missing out when you neglect your Planning & Scheduling.

3. Want to start your journey on the Road to Reliability??

Download the Reliability Academy eBook?and discover a simple, proven framework that you can use to achieve a highly reliable plant for your organisation. Unlike other overly complicated models that use 10 to 20 elements, the Road to Reliability framework only uses 4 elements to achieve great results.