The enormous value of management protecting maintenance planners
April 27, 2026
6 min read
Key Highlights
- Protect planners from non-planning duties; diverting them kills planning output and erodes reliability gains.
- Proper planning boosts wrench time 35%→55%, turning a 30-person crew into 47-person output capacity.
- Proactive maintenance driven by planning delivers 10:1 ROI, preventing failures and cutting total costs.
Management must actively protect the planning function. The investment of proper planning provides millions of dollars in company profit, but many companies fail because they misunderstand the proper use of planners. They frequently use planners for non-planning duties. And even when planners are not doing other duties, a company’s flawed understanding of planning and planning processes leads to failure.
The value of properly protected planning is enormous: a single planner can provide up to $17.7 million for a company. A single planner can plan for up to 30 craftspersons. Proper planning (including scheduling) increases wrench time for craftspersons from 35% to 55%. A 30-person crew thus performs the work of 47 persons (55%/35% = 1.57, 1.57 × 30 = 47). At a loaded wage rate of $50/hr, a craftsperson costs $104,000/yr ($50 × 2080 hr/yr), so gaining 17 persons gives an extra $1,768,000 of “free” labor. One may ask, “Why do we need extra labor? Aren’t we keeping up with the plant and taking care of operator issues?” Yes, but the typical maintenance force deals with a lot of reactive work. Furthermore, when already “keeping up,” by definition, any extra labor goes toward proactive work heading off reactive work altogether. And the industry rule-of-thumb for proactive work is 1:10, meaning that every extra $1 spent on proactive work saves $10 on the “bottom line.” The company greases a bearing properly at the right time rather than replaces a bearing at an inconvenient time causing collateral damage and loss of product. The free labor for the extra 17 craftspersons thus invested yields the company an extra $17.7 million per year.
To achieve this success, management must actively protect planners to complete the initial planning on all the new work, to assess all the incoming feedback for updating job plans, and to fill the crew schedules each week. However, instead of “planning” at all, many companies commonly give planners other duties. Planners might participate on project teams and various committees. Project engineers find great value in having knowledgeable craft planners on project teams including helping with technical research and other engineering support. They may task planners with designing new PMs. Planners become fair game for safety committees and root cause analysis teams. Planners might handle contracts for vendor maintenance support. In addition, planners often fill in for supervisors and craftspersons.
All of these activities provide value, but they take away from planning. Management must balance the annual $17.7 million per year in profits gained from a planner when planning against the value of any other activity. Should management re-assign a planner to be a welder or a supervisor for a day? Should management choose a planner instead of a craftsperson, supervisor, engineer, or anyone else to participate on a team or committee? Probably not.
Even when supposedly planning, companies commonly misunderstand the purpose of planning. They essentially require planners to make “perfect” job plans with “perfect” time estimates and “perfect” job details. Not only do these efforts take excessive time planning each job, craftspersons then insist planners help on planned jobs-in-progress to make up for “imperfect” plans. Such extra time keeps planners from planning all the incoming work which then leads to craftspersons insisting planners help with unplanned jobs-in-progress. Craftspersons end up executing unplanned work and supervisors do not start weeks with fully loaded schedules.
Companies may also require overly complex and unrealistic schedules that take excessive time to create and update as the week unfolds. In addition, other planner interferences include simple organization failures: Planners typically should not attend daily morning meetings and daily scheduling meetings. Avoid “Death by Meeting.” Else, the proper planning function is lost.
Yet even when appropriately planning, many companies have convoluted processes taking excessive time and preventing planners from planning all the work and filling supervisor schedules. Perhaps materials handling processes are cumbersome. Does the plant inappropriately mandate kitting all parts? Does the storeroom carry enough parts? Does a low inventory require a cumbersome process with the purchasing department?
What else can planners do? With a ratio of 1:20-30, a single planner cannot do much else and still stay ahead of 20-30 craftspersons. With better ratios of, say, 1:10-20, a planner might be able to help craftspersons with some jobs-in-progress and still stay ahead of planning all the work and filling up the weekly schedule. With ratios of 1:5-15, a planner might be able to help with some jobs-in-progress as well as be on a project team or committee. Such a planner might also be in charge or help with a small stock room.
However, none of these other assignments should keep a planner from planning all the incoming new work, updating plans with feedback, and filling crew schedules. The other assignments cannot be at the expense of the planning function. In addition, any extra duties must be “staff” and never “line” roles. Staff roles such as planning or helping can always wait or be skipped. Line roles such as actually being a craftsperson or supervisor cannot wait or be skipped. A planner should never routinely share a craft role or supervisory role. In such cases of combining planning with a line role, the planning typically never gets done. Is planning worthwhile where a planner supports only 5 craftspersons? $17.7 million times 5/30 equals about $3 million annually and a planning function is definitely a great investment to protect.
Management itself must actively protect the planning function. To achieve the huge financial gain of the investment of proper planning, management must keep planners in place. Planners must not fail in their core duties of handling new work orders and feedback as well as filling weekly schedules with planned work for supervisors. Depending on the planner to craft ratio, management might allow, but must carefully choose among, other duties for planners that do not detract from the planner function. These duties should almost never include line roles such as being part-time craftspersons or supervisors. Protect planners. Don’t settle for good. Be great!
About the Author
Doc Palmer
PE, MBA, CMRP
Doc Palmer, PE (Ret.), MBA, CMRP is the author of McGraw-Hill’s Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook and as managing partner of Richard Palmer and Associates helps companies worldwide with planning and scheduling success. For more information including online help and currently scheduled public workshops, visit www.palmerplanning.com or email Doc at [email protected]. Also visit and subscribe to www.YouTube.com/@docpalmerplanning.
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