Maintenance - Planning & Scheduling

From David Berger's article on Planning versus Scheduling

Maintenance planning: Maintenance planning ensures the most cost-effective use of capital and operating budgets to meet your performance targets. This includes the following elements:

• Ensuring the most cost-effective policy for each asset and component, encompassing failure-based, use-based or condition-based maintenance
• Establishing efficient and effective job plans for planned or repetitive maintenance work
• Determining resource requirements to implement year’s maintenance program, including identifying any training needs
• Ensuring adequate spare parts availability to meet this year’s demand, balanced with a healthy turnover rate and low obsolescence
• Optimizing processes and making full use of supporting technology such as your CMMS, mobile devices and analytical tools
• Tracking results and modifying plans in order to meet or exceed priority performance targets

Maintenance scheduling

Despite the clever plans that might be drafted as described above, nothing really happens unless work is actually scheduled. Maintenance scheduling is the process of matching the work backlog that results from the planning cycle with available staff, contractors, materials, equipment and other resources. This includes committing to a calendar date.

The CMMS is an excellent tool for both maintenance planning and scheduling. Sophisticated features abound such as:

• Ability to sort and filter a schedule by type of work, craft, time period, priority, required date, percent completion, etc.
• Drag and drop capability on a graphical schedule, for more easily balancing workload by moving work orders from one day or crew to another
• “What-if” analysis to play with various schedules in simulation mode, and select a schedule only if optimal
• Tools to assist with turnarounds and major overhauls

To maximize resource utilization and efficiency, there always should be more work in backlog than resources available to accomplish it. Schedules need constant revision as work is completed, new work requests are received, and priorities change. As well, CMMS analysis tools allow maintenance planners to detect trends and anomalies so longer-term maintenance plans can be updated, such as switching from a policy of failure-based to condition-based maintenance for a given asset to avoid a costly recurring failure.