As a Maintenance Planner, you need to research the job and determine the type of craft resources required. Are multiple crafts required, such as an Electrician to disconnect and a Millwright to change out the pump as examples? Are you writing parent – child work orders to segment the job requirements? Based on your research, how complex is the job? A simple pump change may be accomplished by journeymen but a complex pump rebuild may require a higher skill level. It is important to note these items on the Maintenance job plan.
A next question will be how many resources are required? We have to be careful that we assign the correct number of people to the task. There is always a tendency to plan for two craftspeople to do the work but is that really needed? Furthermore depending on the organization, if two people are required; can you assign a journeyman and a helper as opposed to 2 journeymen?
When it comes to scheduling the resources, the decision must be made based on the availability and complexity of the work to utilize your internal resources, or contract the work out. If the task is a higher skill level that your organization may not possess like vibration analysis, you may be required to outsource the tasks.
Another consideration is the man hour estimate required to accomplish each of the tasks. Recognize that each time we do the work; the times will vary based on the experience of the people doing the work and the complexity of the tasks at the time of the event.
Get more information on how to improve your maintenance planning and scheduling processes or learn how we guide you to success in the process here. There you will find our training courses, planner coaching, assessment, and more resources.
Yes, much of the Maintenance work we do is repetitive but it’s not always exactly the same every time. As an example, the bolts may have rusted since the last work and require being cut off to open the equipment to perform the work which will add time to the job.