Focus on Reliability

A maintenance planner's job is a crucial part of any successful maintenance and reliability program. Maintenance planners have a lead role in ensuring that all equipment and machinery is properly maintained, repaired, and, if necessary, replaced in a timely manner.

As many of us who have been a part of a maintenance organization realize, the function of the Planner is usually one in which we expect to get a lot of return for our investment.

Maintenance Planners, who are tasked with improving the efficiency of the Technicians working time, are often placed in the role without the benefit of formal training and coaching.

A couple of months ago, I visited an organization that had just started an initiative to reduce their spend on spare parts. The odd thing about this initiative was that it was driven by finance and procurement. The focus was on cutting the price they paid for these spare parts. When I asked why this initiative had started, I was told that someone in finance felt that their procurement practices weren’t what they should be. They believed that there was opportunity to cut costs through better management of the process.

How many technicians per planner-scheduler? Should we focus on system ownership, or business goals? Find out this and more with our video, and register for our class here!

Recently, after our Planning and Scheduling Webinar, a question came up around the partnership between Operations and Maintenance in the Scheduling process. The observation from the enquirer was that even though the Planning process may be moving along nicely the partnership in the Scheduling process seems to lag behind. So, what can we do to accelerate the strong partnership between the groups?

Struggling to put together a complete weekly schedule? It may surprise you, but you’re not alone.  Although the processes of work execution (preventive and predictive programs, planning, scheduling, coordination, storeroom and production partnerships) are foundational, many groups struggle to put it all together well. Without this foundation, more advanced concepts fizzle out quickly. Frustration ensues. There are many pieces that need to align to complete the entire work execution puzzle. To start, let's focus on developing the weekly maintenance schedule. There are some basic steps that you should address to move things forward.