Transforming Operations & Maintenance: A Practical Guide to Effective Planning

Transforming Operations & Maintenance: A Practical Guide to Effective Planning

Imagine a plant team navigating a busy road: the maintenance manager, blindfolded, the plant manager peering from the rearview, and the production manager shouting to speed up while warning of a flat tire. This chaotic image mirrors the reality in many facilities today, where maintenance is forced to operate reactively and operations dictate urgent fixes without a strategic plan.

To break this cycle—often called the “circle of despair” or unplanned maintenance—organizations need a solid partnership between operations and maintenance. The foundation? Well‑structured daily or weekly planning and scheduling meetings that translate data into decisive action.

Key Meeting Objectives

• Review yesterday’s work and lessons learned
• Set and confirm tasks for today
• Finalize tomorrow’s schedule
• Publish the weekly schedule by Friday 2 p.m.
• Track compliance with planning, scheduling, and machine uptime metrics
• Ensure 100 % workforce coverage, including contractors
• Address new work requests promptly

Participants should include operations liaisons with real authority, maintenance supervisors, and planners from both mechanical and electrical/ instrumentation (E/I) teams. A mid‑day, 20‑minute format keeps the focus sharp and actions clear.

Making Meetings Effective

• Use a priority chart to align focus
• Pre‑plan backlog work before the meeting starts
• Confirm staff availability ahead of time
• Treat meeting decisions as final—any change is a new work order

Measuring Success

Upper management must own these meetings, not just support them. A simple scorecard—available on the IDCON website—tracks:

• Attendance of key stakeholders
• Preparation completeness
• Unapproved work orders in the backlog
• Timeliness of the weekly schedule release

Combine these indicators with classic metrics such as scheduling compliance, planning compliance, and machine availability to get a full picture of operational health.

For example, a major U.S. process plant that revamped its planning and scheduling saw a 7.7 % average increase in reliability on a $6 million bottleneck within eight months—a tangible return on investment.

About the Author

Tor (“Tor”) Idhammar is partner and vice‑president at IDCON Inc., specializing in reliability and maintenance consulting. He trains teams in preventive and essential care, condition monitoring, planning, scheduling, spare parts management, and root‑cause elimination. Tor is the author of the “Condition Monitoring Standards” series (volumes 1‑3). He holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Lund University, Sweden. Contact Tor at 800‑849‑2041 or info@idcon.com.