The Truth About Scheduling

Which is it? Surely, every CMMS user knows the difference.

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. 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 automated scheduling such that?any size organization?can easily and quickly generate this output.

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

The CMMS vendors often have one or more business partners that create scheduling software as an add-on which interfaces with their product. Based on the designs of these add-ons (as of 2021), there are challenges and limitations the user community is not being told. The sales engineer who demonstrates the product follows a script which probably doesn’t resemble your process. The software vendor would not be familiar with your staffing levels or output requirements. Further, you may not even have a maintenance scheduler role in place. Sometimes a purchase is made by department heads without input from the real users of the product. In some instances they may confuse maintenance scheduling versus outage scheduling. This is not something you buy and then figure out later how to make it fit. The best approach is to first conduct a needs assessment which documents the type of schedule you need and the roles to operate it – and then purchase the software.

Weekly maintenance scheduling is an advanced process. That said, many struggle to perform this best practice. The complexity is due to the many prerequisites, e.g., process, software, data accuracy, staffing and knowledge

Just to be clear as to the challenge here: 95% of the CMMS community has never successfully created an automated, resource-leveled weekly maintenance schedule. The reasons are numerous, but most revolve around bad data - which forces subjective selection.

Different Types of Bad Data, Bad Process, and Bad Roles

When bad data exists, then the CMMS is relegated to basic processes with minimal return on investment.

Every size organization, regardless of industry, should be able to create a resource-leveled, weekly maintenance schedule, with one click, from within the CMMS.

The Odds are Not Good - But What if You Could?

If I talked to 100 people, 99 would say this is not possible. Some would question that this process could ever be automated, i.e., the history of the maintenance industry is just not good enough. Others would say, "The CMMS data integrity will never be accurate enough". Lastly, some would quietly state that their leadership team really doesn't want a weekly schedule because it would tie them down too much.