Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Reduces Costs and Downtime

Maintenance planning and scheduling is a hot topic in manufacturing today. Maintenance professionals everywhere know that, as Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” But in reality, scheduled maintenance often takes a backseat to urgent production and maintenance issues or other priorities. Many facilities operate in a largely reactive mode, responding to breakdowns and problems as they arise. This is not only foolhardy, it is expensive! According to the Marshall Institute, “Planned work is 3 to 4 times more cost-effective than unplanned work.” At Maintenance Innovators, Inc., we specialize in helping companies build high-performing maintenance planning and scheduling processes.
Are you frustrated with your current maintenance planning and scheduling process? Is your company lacking any formalized methodology for performing maintenance activities? Are you tired of “flying by the seat of your pants” every time a breakdown occurs? If you said yes to these questions, it’s time to consider formalizing your maintenance planning and scheduling processes. Many companies don’t have anyone in charge of maintenance planning and scheduling. Still others have a planner on staff, but that person spends most of his or her time doing anything but planning.
The truth is, planning and scheduling are not the same thing. As laid out in the book Cover Your A$$ets: Asset Management at Your Place and at Your Pace, “Planning and scheduling are two entirely different roles. Planning maintenance work is concerned with the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’ Scheduling work is the ‘when’ and on the day of execution, the ‘who.’” The primary job of the planner is to increase utilization of maintenance personnel. The scheduler is charged with getting the work done, on time and on budget. All of this may sound too good to be true, but at Maintenance Innovators, we have spent more than three decades helping clients implement maintenance planning and scheduling processes to improve performance while decreasing costs and reducing downtime.
Here are a few of the activities we will undertake to get you there:
- Assessing the current strengths and opportunities that exist in your current processes
- Developing comprehensive strategies to get better quickly, yet pragmatically
- Differentiating between planning (the what and how) and scheduling (the when and who)
- Documenting all maintenance planning and scheduling processes in process guides
- Training everyone to those process guides
- Executing documented processes, using metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure continuous improvement
If you’d like to know more about how Maintenance Innovators, Inc. can help you reach your maintenance planning and scheduling objectives, contact us at (913) 633-4009. We serve clients across the United States and around the world, and have experience in a multitude of industries. We look forward to working with you!
Posted in Maintenance Planning and Scheduling