What causes maintenance planning and scheduling to fail to increase maintenance productivity, when at a casual glance, the framework of planning and scheduling seems to be in place?
The six principles of maintenance planning play an important role in boosting an operation’s maintenance system. Image credit:WearCheck
The six principles of maintenance planning present a key step-by-step action plan to follow, in order to boost the efficiency of the process. These principles include: operating as separate groups (planners and the maintenance crew), focusing on future work, managing job history and equipment data, estimating time required based on experience, recognising the skills of the crew, and the measurement of performance.
Raymond Chizu, sales developer at WearCheck Zimbabwe, outlines the importance of implementing and following all six maintenance planning steps meticulously, with an in-depth discussion on each stage.
WearCheck’s Technical Bulletin 82 covers the topic in greater detail. You can read the full article here.
In essence, the six planning principles protect the planners from doing craft work or standing in for the supervisors, instead enabling the planners to focus on current and future work. In addition, they empower the planner to manage job history and equipment data, and to use their well-earned expertise to estimate job times. Furthermore, the principles allow for the recognition of the skill of the technicians in making job plans, to protect against ‘overplanning’ (the 20 – 80 Pareto rule), and, importantly, performance of the maintenance function is tracked and measured. This data gives useful insight into how the maintenance process is improving in efficiency as the steps are followed.
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