Master Maintenance Planning & Scheduling: 12 Proven Principles

In earlier articles I explored why many companies resist planning and why planners often end up doing field work instead of planning. The root cause is an ineffective workflow that forces supervisors to rely on planners for reactive tasks, leaving planners with little time to plan new work.

Having addressed those pain points, this column outlines the core principles that underpin a successful maintenance planning and scheduling program. These twelve principles – six for planning and six for scheduling – form the foundation of my “Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook.”

Planning Principle 1 – Keep planners independent of crew supervision. When supervisors grab planners to assist on jobs, planners become unavailable for planning duties.

Planning Principle 2 – Focus planners on future work rather than merely troubleshooting delays on jobs already in progress. This leverages the repetitive nature of most maintenance tasks and accelerates the learning curve.

Planning Principle 3 – Track work at the component level (e.g., a valve rather than an entire system). Only then can planners reliably retrieve historical feedback to refine future estimates.

Planning Principle 4 – Use an experienced technician as the planner, relying on their practical knowledge to estimate labor hours with minimal historical analysis. This cuts down on time‑consuming estimation techniques.

Planning Principle 5 – Equip planners with the skills of field technicians, so they can produce concise job plans without over‑loading crews with procedural detail.

Planning Principle 6 – Remember that the ultimate goal of planning is to reduce delays and enable technicians to spend more time on productive work.

Planning and scheduling are intertwined: effective planning reduces job delays, allowing supervisors to assign more work. Scheduling answers the question “how many jobs to assign?” While planning addresses the major challenges, scheduling provides the operational framework.

Scheduling Principle 1 – Estimate labor hours and craft skill levels for every job plan.

Scheduling Principle 2 – Prioritize jobs so that work already in progress is not interrupted unnecessarily.

Scheduling Principle 3 – Require crew leaders to forecast available labor hours for each craft over the next week.

Scheduling Principle 4 – Combine the forecasted crew labor hours with the estimated labor hours of planned jobs, typically ordered by priority.

Scheduling Principle 5 – Let crew leaders schedule and assign daily work, even though the planning department sets the weekly target.

Scheduling Principle 6 – Measure scheduling success. Tracking outcomes ensures that planning and scheduling remain active and effective.

Reactive work must also be accommodated. Management should empower crew leaders to address urgent jobs and to deviate from the schedule when necessary. Planning should not restrict crews from starting critical work immediately, but planners can still generate a rapid job plan that guides the crew.

Allowing crews to tackle unplanned work and to break schedules is essential, especially for reactive plants. The real productivity gain comes from beginning each crew’s week with a sufficient workload goal, which in practice boosts crew productivity by more than 50 %.

This column and the two preceding ones are best suited for readers who already recognize the value of a planning program. In the January/February issue I will quantify the value of maintenance planning, and future articles will dive deeper into each principle and address common planning challenges.

Doc Palmer, a CMRP with nearly 25 years of industrial experience in a major electric utility’s maintenance department, is the author of the "Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook." From 1990 to 1994 he overhauled the utility’s maintenance planning organization, a transformation that paved the way for planning across all crafts and stations.