Maintenance Planning

The work process we call maintenance planning can almost always be improved in any given mill or plant. In fact in most plants we visit maintenance planners don’t plan. Planners do all kinds of tasks except work order planning.

Typical things planners do, and should not do include:

• Act as relief supervisors
• Expedite Materials
• Work on tools
• Plan emergency work

This month’s reliability tip will help your plant to work in the right direction. Start by drawing up and agreeing to the maintenance planning work flow. This work must include all involved personnel in order to get buy in to the process. The planning work process is not a stand alone process. The planning process is just a piece of our complete planning and scheduling manual we use to customize to our clients’ needs. But identifying the maintenance planning process is a very good starting point, your plant can continue the work flow identification in the same format for scheduling, work order initiation, etc. We have provided an example from our manual you can use as a starting point for your effort.

The maintenance planning process is sometimes confused with maintenance scheduling. This phenomenon has previously been discussed in an earlier reliability tips issue – the difference between planning & scheduling.