Maintenance planning principles

Effective maintenance planning can improve maintenance efficiency. Improve your maintenance and shutdown planning by implementing these seven principles of planning:

Principle 1: Organize your maintenance planners into their own department. The planners report to a different supervisor than that of the maintenance technicians.

Principle 2: Focus on planning future work. Technicians provide feedback on current jobs. The maintenance planners use the feedback in planning for future work.

Principle 3: Maintain a database system based on equipment numbers for tracking jobs. Maintenance planners use data from previous jobs to improve plans for future work. For maintenance shutdown planning, shutdown planning software can improve the planning process.

Principle 4: Use personal experience to plan work estimates to avoid delays and safety problems. The planners should be expert technicians trained in planning techniques.

Principle 5: Recognize the skills of maintenance technicians. Provide only the minimum details necessary for job plans.

Principle 6: Understand the purpose of planning is to improve wrench time and reduce delays.

Principle 7: After a shutdown is over, use "lessons learned" to restructure some of your library job plans for reuse in future shutdowns.

Reference:

Palmer, D. (2005, November 11). Follow these planning, scheduling principles [Electronic version]. Reliable Plant. Retrieved October 5, 2010, from http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/378/planning-scheduling