The efficient use of men, materials and external resources requires coordination and preparation.
When a job starts everything needed to do the job must be at hand and must be right to use. The maintenance planner does the preparation required prior to the start of a job.
The planner’s focus is to prepare everything needed to execute a job through to its successful completion and have it ready and on-hand before the job starts.
How well the planning job is done directly affects how efficiently the men do the work and how long it takes for it to be done.
Keywords: job scheduling, breakdown work.
Background
Why plan? Planning maintenance work maximizes the benefits from the time, money and effort that go into a job.
There is plenty of evidence around that proves the great value gained from maintenance planning.
The “MAINTENANCE PLANNING AND SCHEDULING HANDBOOK” by Doc Palmer, published by McGraw Hill, presents clear evidence of the benefits that accrue by planning the work for your maintenance crew.
The difficulty people have with the planning process is to decide where planning starts and stops.
The key concept behind planning
The Chinese philosopher Confucius said – “In all things success depends on previous preparation and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”
Confucius was right.
If you want things to be done successfully they must be prepared, and made ready, before doing them.
The job of a maintenance planner is to prepare for the work of doing maintenance. The job of a maintenance scheduler is to prepare for the people to do the maintenance.
The planner first organizes everything in readiness for a job to be scheduled. But he cannot schedule the job!
The persons responsible for providing the people, and the access to the equipment, must do the scheduling.
When the planner hands over a complete work pack his job is done. He is successful at the point of hand-over.
He has compiled and assembled the parts, tools, resources, and information needed to successfully do the work. He has done his job!
He then goes back and starts preparing for the next lot of maintenance work.
A planner’s job perspective and requirements are to:
- Plan first.
- Plan in detail.
- Plan then purchase.
- Hand over the completed work pack to Maintenance.
- Go back and plan the next job.
Maintenance supervision schedules the planned work with production supervision last.
The Planner’s time scale is 5 days away and longer. Planners cannot help with breakdowns and rush jobs.
It is already too late to plan! In a breakdown, you can only react to what you find during the repair.
The maintenance crew leading hand looks after breakdowns and those ‘must-be- done-today’ jobs.
Don’t bother your planner if it’s a breakdown or if the job must be done within the next 5 days. His role is to get ahead of today’s problems and prepare for next week’s successes.
If you stop him from doing that you will stop having future successes.
The planner’s success today is everyone’s success tomorrow!
Three questions
What exactly is maintenance planning?
To satisfy Confucius’ advice, maintenance planning is about preparing to achieve success.
Do whatever is necessary to guarantee successful outcomes.
What exactly should a maintenance planner do?
To maximize the benefit from time, money and effort the planner must do all the thinking, reading, procedures, investigation and procuring so that the maintainers spend more tool-time on the plant and equipment.
Good planning means high tool-time, it means machines are fixed quickly, they are fixed well and with fewer people and supervision.
Where exactly is the maintenance planner located so that his job can be done properly?
The planner’s time focus is 5 days and longer. He cannot sit where the maintenance time focus is today and tomorrow.
He must sit in an area where he is not disturbed by day-to- day issues.
He also needs to be in contact with Production so he can get a feel for their priorities and production schedule. The planner sits in the production office.
The planner must report to people whose time focus is longer than 5 days.
He cannot report to workshop supervision whose time focus is today and tomorrow as the planner will then become the ‘goffer’ for rushed work and never find the time to be ahead of the workload.
The planner reports to the Maintenance Manager and not to ‘shop floor’ supervision.
Conclusion
Let me say it one more time because it is so important to your success –
“The Planner’s job is to get ahead of today’s problems and prepare for next week’s successes. If you stop him from doing that you will stop having future successes. The planner’s success today is everyone’s success tomorrow!”
Mike Sondalini
Equipment Longevity Engineer
If you found this interesting, you may like the ebook Bulk Materials Handling Introduction.
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