Maintenance Planning and Scheduling

Best Practices
By Ricky Smith CMRP

A properly designed and executed planning and scheduling (P&S; see Figure 1.6) system can be one
of the most effective means of aiding reliability initiatives and inculcating reliability practices into
the daily execution of maintenance activities.

Figure 1.6
A reliability engineer is well served in having a good understanding of how maintenance planning
and scheduling works ideally, as well as how it has been applied in a plant.
Most important, someone who understands the P&S (Planning and Scheduling process can use it to
leverage reliability improvement efforts.

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.
Optimizing Maintenance Wrench-Time is critical to success. Wrench time is defined as the actual
amount of time a craftsperson spends doing value-added work. A wrench time study, or work
sampling study, is aimed at identifying and eliminating or mitigating the time spent on nonvalue-
added tasks.
Wrench Time Facts
Fact #1: World-class wrench time is 55-65%; most companies have a wrench time between 18-30%.
Fact #2: It is not uncommon for the effectiveness of planned and scheduled jobs to be 25% or more
than the same job without planning and scheduling (P&S). To see just how critical maintenance
effectiveness is, consider the following:
Fact #3: The term “wrench time” refers to a unit of measure for the time maintenance personnel
spend doing the actual work for which they are responsible for. It does not include the time a
technician spends:
• Looking for parts
• Looking for their supervisor
• Waiting on Production

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 non-urgent. 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 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 ran headlong into the fray and figured out what we needed as we
go. Sometimes, we must back up and try a different route. This approach adds an unnecessary cost
to the job, but when production has been put on hold or threatened, you must demonstrate a bias
for action.

Putting an end to work such as this is a goal that is common to both reliability and planning and
scheduling, and the two should be linked together. The primary people in a P&S system are the
planner, the scheduler, and the maintenance coordinator.

In general, the planner identifies everything that will be needed to execute the job, the scheduler
arranges and communicates all timing aspects of the job, and the maintenance coordinator
enables maintenance to attend to the most important work at the optimum time relative to
production scheduling.

Usually, both the planner and scheduler report through the maintenance department, whereas the
maintenance coordinator should report through the operating department.
Some organizations have one or more people assigned to each of these roles: at the other end of
the spectrum, some may have individuals responsible for more than one of these roles so a RACI
for Maintenance Planning and Scheduling must to use to ensure everyone knows their roles and
responsibilities.

Either situation can work effectively as long as the roles are looked at as distinct and ample time is
allotted to fulfill each one.

As maintenance work requests are made from the operating department, it should be a continual
process for them to be “funneled” through the maintenance coordinator. As mentioned, one of the
maintenance coordinator’s primary tasks is to enable maintenance to work on the most important
work.

When all work for a given maintenance organization goes through a single operating department
person (the maintenance coordinator), priorities can be leveled and unnecessary or duplicate work
eliminated.

The benefit this provides to the maintenance organization cannot be overstated. Rather than having
everyone in the production department who initiates maintenance requests setting a priority based
on personal current needs and a limited perspective, a maintenance coordinator, who has a larger
perspective by virtue of seeing all maintenance requests and knowing the overall production
scheduling needs and constraints, can provide a much clearer focus for response by the
maintenance organization.
Maintenance coordinators are responsible for overseeing maintenance activities, stocking
inventory, and providing administrative support to maintenance supervisors and technicians.
Additionally, maintenance coordinators manage third-party contractors such as plumbers and
electricians to accomplish maintenance tasks.

The maintenance coordinator deletes unnecessary or duplicate requests and adjusts the priorities
of the remaining work requests to reflect the needs of the production department, while
recognizing the limited capacity of the maintenance organization. Then, the requests are sent to the
planner. The planner’s most important role is to identify and quantify the resources required to
execute a given job.
The Planner query's Work Order Statuses in "Active" and with the Planning Status
• “Waiting on Planning " and revises the Planning Status to " Planning " when Planning begins.
• The Maintenance Supervisor approves or revises the Work Order Status to “ACTIVE" and the
Planning Status is " Waiting on Planning "
The Planner will review these Work Orders and revise the Planning Status RTS (Ready to Schedule)
to the appropriate status while taking appropriate action.

The Work Order Status is revised to "Rejected" if the work is to be done in the future or "Canceled"
if Work has started but will not be completed. The Planning Status is revised to Deferred if not
performed this year.

The Maintenance Supervisor Should Agree with the Estimate and if so, will Commission Work.

The Planner queries for Work Orders with a Planning Status

The Maintenance Supervisor Reviews all Work Orders before they are closed so the data is
accurate resulting in the Maintenance Scorecard to be accurate.

The Maintenance Planner closes all work orders to ensure the data is accurate.

Join me for “Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Best Practices Virtual Workshop”
March 18-20, 2025, Cost $1295.00 USD

Contact me if you want more information at rsmith@[Link]