Efficient Plant March 2021 - 22

department | on the floor

Visualize
using the
available
hours to
create a
fill-line
mark on
the side of
a bucket.

tion raw or packaging materials, inferior
or used spare parts, or improper operation and maintenance to affect asset
reliability.
Not often discussed is the role
that maintenance planning and then
scheduling plays in not introducing
those defects. Poorly developed job
plans that lack precision specifications allow the introduction of defects.
Inefficient scheduling processes, along
with the lack of operations partnerships,
introduce defects. Not having the right parts
and substituting " equivalent " parts creates flaws.
Remember, it's not about planning and then scheduling more work. The design of preventive and predictive maintenance programs mainly finds things
in the act of failure. The focus must be on eliminating the need for the work in the first place.
Scheduling sets an expectation of the work to be
accomplished. Start with understanding the available labor hours for the coming week(s). The scheduling function works with the various partners, i.e.,
engineering, operations, and production planning,
to determine future work priorities. It seems that
maintenance personnel huddles in many organizations in a small office, hammering out what they
believe to be meaningful without the other stakeholders present. As a result, buy-in to the schedule is
missing during the execution phase and equipment
access is not available. Measure backlog in estimated
work order hours, not numbers. The backlog should
not have birthdays either. Trigger the preventiveand predictive-maintenance (PM/PdM) procedures
a few weeks in advance.
Visualize using the available hours to create a fillline on the side of a bucket. The scheduling function
populates the bucket, using the PM/PdM work and
prioritized work from the backlog up to that fill line.
The goal is to schedule 100% of the available hours.
Not enough work to reach the fill line? One
likely cause is that the technicians are not feeding
the beast, the CMMS system. One client recently

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implemented planning and scheduling, working
with technicians to gain buy-in. They increased the
work orders generated by more than 800% and the
maintenance budget by 20%. Remember, no work
order, no work.
Another cause is that technicians are fixing everything on the PM/PdM activities and not allowing planning and scheduling benefits to reduce the
avoidable delays. Implement a time rule that requires
an emergency work order if more than 20 min. is
needed to fix something found on a PM.
Suppose planning and scheduling are combined
into a single role. In that case, the first-level
supervisor pulls work from the bucket and generates
the final weekly schedule. The supervisor assigns
technicians to the specific jobs by day. Otherwise,
the scheduling function works with that first-level
supervisor to accomplish those tasks. Some organizations require the first-level supervisor to own
the entire scheduling process. They determined that
asking the combined planner scheduler to achieve
both functions does not yield the desired results.
These are only a few of the insights and challenges for maintenance planning, then scheduling.
Change begins with education, followed by coaching. Take action to develop and improve your
processes. EP
Learn more during online events June 22 to 24
(Maintenance Planning & Scheduling) and August 17
to 19 (Maintenance Storeroom and Materials Management). Go to rmc.utk.edu/events/ to register and
for more information .

Based in Knoxville, Klaus M. Blache is director
of the Reliability & Maintainability Center at the
Univ. of Tennessee, and a research professor in the
College of Engineering. Contact him at
kblache@utk.edu.
Jeff Shiver, CMRP, is Founder of People and
Processes Inc., Yulee, FL. He educates and coaches
organizations to success in operational and
reliability challenges. He can be found on LinkedIn.

MARCH 2021

3/3/21 7:20 PM

http://rmc.utk.edu/events/ http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Efficient Plant March 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant March 2021