Planning and Scheduling is the core of any reliability program. It is part of Work Control process which is described as the execution of a work order from start to end, and setting the right expectations to everyone involved. The role can be viewed separately or as a hybrid, depending on the maturity of the organization and the complexity of the process.

Simply put, the Planner is the one who scopes the jobs and build the job plans, and the Scheduler is the one that assigns schedule for each specific job. Ideally, most time should be spent on planning than in scheduling, especially on organizations with good ready backlogs and everyone knows of their role so they can feed the planner something to prep for before the meeting, making the process smoother. If the Planner can keep up with the workload, most likely he handles the scheduling aspect as well.

One key to speed up the efficiency of Planning and Scheduling is to have proper asset hierarchy. If the asset doesn’t match with the CMMS or EAM system being used, how can you connect the Bill of Materials or the job plan? Another reason for having proper asset hierarchy is to allow for easy access when technicians refer to the materials later on. It is very important in maintainability in general.

While it s true that Planners/Schedulers don t own the schedules and they just facilitate the creation of them, critical to their success is to build trusting relationship and transparency with other stakeholders. The Planner/Scheduler should know enough about the skills of the people so the right job is assigned to the right person. They should also coordinate with different departments such as Operations to make sure that the job schedule is carried out as planned, even after the schedule is released. Executive sponsorship, having the right buy-in from leaders of different department, and the support and commitment of management to the scheduling process will make a huge difference in the success of the Planning and Scheduling.

The other thing that is important here to make sure assets are in good condition and spares are available in case of downtime. This information can be used to separate the useable parts from the other parts and can be used in case of emergencies to contact the vendors as well. As the gatekeeper of Bill of Materials, the planner has to coordinate with reliability engineers (or owners of these assets) for any changes taking place.

The communication is the key here because with better understanding of a job plan and schedule leads to better execution. The planning and scheduling is necessary to increase production, reduce the maintenance cost, and decrease downtime. To drive improvements in the planning and scheduling process, start small and be realistic. Picks the assets that yield the most for the time that you’re spending. Establish the job plan library based on previous success and ROI, and build from these small successes over time.

 

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