Do you know the purpose and principles of maintenance planning and scheduling?

Planning and scheduling provide the quality-of-execution and productivity pieces of maintenance:

• Planning operates a continuous improvement cycle to improve job plans over the years to help skilled craftspersons execute work better. 
• Scheduling increases work order completion rate to help crews complete more proactive work. 

Both better work quality and better work completion rates reduce reactive work and operational failures. Important principles support proper planning and scheduling.

Proper maintenance itself, of course, keeps facility functions and supporting assets operating. The goal is not to repair assets after failure hinders operation. The maintenance group reactively repairs any breakdowns, but the aim is to keep the failures from happening in the first place. Operations with less reactive work make superior profits. Maintain, not repair.

Principles of planning programs

Proper planning programs help craftspersons improve job plans over the years by institutionalizing knowledge. Proper planning does not replace the need for skilled and experienced craftspersons. Rather, the planning group retains and shares knowledge and lessons learned. Over the years, top craftspersons conscientiously keep notes from past jobs with ideas “for the next time…” Different minds, journals, and lockers hide vast amounts of scattered information. Therefore, the planners collect and organize these ideas and lessons learned as the workforce works on assets over the years. Planners provide continually better plans thus improving the quality of craftsperson job execution.

The first three supporting principles of planning form the continuous improvement (Deming) cycle. They are (1) protecting planners, (2) focusing on future work, and (3) saving feedback.. Industry frequently buries planners with administration work and other assignments, so management must protect the planning function. Protected planners triage new work requests to give head starts (that are never perfect) for the skilled craftspersons. During job execution, the craftspersons (without planner help) resolve issues the job plan did not cover. Then planners receive feedback to make plans better “for the next time.” 

The next two principles of planning avoid traps that would keep planners from planning all the work. (4) For time estimates, planners generally make a simple judgment of “what it might take a craftsperson who generally knows what they are doing” and for a job “that does not present any unusual problems.” The estimate should not include extra time “just in case.” (5) Similarly, for the level of detail, the job plan should be: “as detailed as possible, subject to the constraint of planning all the work.” Craft skill will make up any shortfall.

(6) The last planning principle of wrench time – the amount of time craftspersons spend on direct work versus traveling, getting parts, or other areas not moving jobs ahead – tells why it is possible to do more work. Industry average is only 35%, the point where humans feel busy. Surprisingly, best practice wrench time of 55% comes from better scheduling, not necessarily better job plans.

Principles of scheduling programs

Over the years, first through attrition and then subsequent rehiring, the normal workforce employs just enough craftspersons to have a profitable operation, but does have a significant amount of reactive work. Thus, any extra work would be proactive because the workforce already covers the reactive work. And a proper scheduling program helps crews complete more work than they would normally complete. It can improve a workforce from 35% to 55% wrench time, a 57% increase in productivity. A workforce normally completing 1,000 work orders a month can improve to over 1,500 work orders.

The first four principles of scheduling set up the weekly schedule as goal setting. They are (1) having job plans that identify craft skill and labor estimates, (2) having a credible priority system, (3) setting the next week as the schedule horizon, and (4) 100% fully loading that week’s labor forecast with planned jobs. The scheduler must have the planned labor estimates for the different planned jobs and organizes the jobs by priority with some attention to bundling some of the lower priority work alongside higher priority work for convenience (same area, same asset, etc.). 

The priority system should have more than three simple levels, but not too much complexity. A period of a week in length smooths out the wide variability in accuracy of labor estimates and in shortness provides a tangible goal. Fully loading the schedule defeats Parkinson’s Law (the amount of work assigned expands to fill the time available) to boost the productivity. A goal of work, not “Does everyone have something to do?”

The last two principles address (5) daily scheduling and (6) schedule compliance. Field supervisors take care of daily scheduling. Supervisors best know the ever-changing status of individual jobs and so make daily assignments and coordinate lock-out-tag-out as the week unfolds. Management should expect between 40% and 90% for schedule compliance to the weekly schedule. Under 40% often means supervisors ignored the schedules or the schedules were just terribly unrealistic. Over 90% often means not fully loading to 100% of the labor availability, perhaps by under-estimating labor availability or over-estimating labor in the planned jobs. Weekly schedule compliance scores under 40% or over 90% mean the workforce fails in obtaining the productivity bump.

Planning and scheduling provide enormous opportunities for company competitive edges in improving both work quality and completion rates to reduce reactive work. Running planning as an improvement cycle and scheduling as goal setting help equip our maintenance forces to be outstanding performers. The supporting principles make planning and scheduling successful. The company with less reactive work operates to make a superior profit. Don’t settle for good. Be great!