What is a good timeframe benchmark for scheduling a work order or put another way - when do you call that work order unscheduled?

Terry O

Once a work order is scheduled, it will have scheduled start and finished dates.

Our w/o's for routine pm's are generated through our mp2 system. These include routine lubrications and regular rebuilds (pumps, heat exchangers, etc.). PDM w/o's are put into the system with a priority code. Priority 1 predicts a lead time of 0-3 months, priority 2 is 0-6 months, priority 3 is 0-12 months, priority 4's are normally ultrasound w/o's that involve only utility loss due to the leaks. Air leaks that are potentially detrimental to machinery, or that can cause machinery malfunction are given a priority 1 designation. This system seems to work, however, I've seen quite a few PDM's ignored , resulting in runtime breakdowns. I'm not sure this is what you're looking for.......

Terry,
Could you clarify your question, perhaps with an example? I think I am wondering the same thing. If the "scheduled start date" field gets populated 12-24 hours before the work starts, does that count as scheduled?

Shelley

What I am seeking is the definitions people use for defining a work order as scheduled.

The time period between when the work order is popualted and the work starts.

Like you mention Shelley - is it any time before the work starts or is the half day or full day cut off?

Terry O

per my maintenance planner........a work order is scheduled when 1) it has a start date and a finish date 2) it has been assigned to a specific person

Hello,

I would define a scheduled work order as the one who has been scheduled in the normal schedule event (that's often something like a weekly schedule).
Just putting a start and end wo a WO makes no scheduled WO.
If you have work which is added to this schedule (without that normal schedule run) I would call it unscheduled.
But in a lot of companies I have seen definitions like:
- If the work will be done next day, it's scheduled
- If the work is not started right after opening the WO, it's scheduled
- If it's not an emergency WO, it's always scheduled.

Please keep in mind the difference between scheduling in terms of planning and acting and (often re-) scheduling in terms of reacting to unplanned events.

In my mind, a scheduled work order would be something that we know needs to be fixed whether the machine will be down or not while we work on it AND we set a time of the week(usually on saturday at my plant)so that there is minimal traffic to get the maintenance done. If we have to fix the problem immediately and are able to "make it work" until we are able to SCHEDULE a shutdown if needed for maintenance then we do that as well. I could keep going, but I think I will stop my rambling now.

I believe that there might be another aspect here, at least in our organization. We schedule jobs and agree upon downtime at our weekly scheduling meeting. This means all jobs after this meeting are to be justified against what is agreed upon. Anything that will supersede the current schedule goes in as Emergency work. This is unscheduled work and requires the requestor to justify the removal of a scheduled job to maintain the hours available. We do schedule in some room for Emergencies but this is used for events that come up that day. Our cut off date is the date of the scheduling meeting or the day after if changes are identified, which is the Friday before the scheduled week. I include PM's in this as they are agreed upon if shutdown is needed.. This is where I believe that the difference lies. If it is planned work and it enters the schedule due to other work not taking place (no downtime due to Production request, emergency issues, ect.) then I would consider that scheduled as far as it is a known amount of time and has everything needed to accomplish the goal. But I believe that this is another can of worm’s altogether.
Good subject and I am interested in what you might think.
Thanks,
Sean O'Leary
Maintenance Planner

Work should be considered planned and scheduled if the planner gets the material available to the crew without paying extra to get it there and the crew can get the work done without causing an unscheduled interruption to production or extra overtime for maintenance. It could be the next day if the system works efficiently.

We run a similar system to the one described above by Sean O'Leary.
We have a weekly plan, and resources are allocated to the jobs that we want to do for the week. Some of these jobs require production downtime, others don't.

On Tuesday we meet with production and decide on the list of maintenance work for the coming week (Wednesday to Tuesday).

Any of the jobs on the list that are subsequently done during the week are deemed scheduled. Some of the jobs will be required to be done at a specific time and day (change a roll during a planned production shut), while others can be done anytime (fix the dripping tap in the bathroom sink).

Since we are a maintenace contractor and we operate under a performance based contract (planning and scheduling is one of the KPI's), there is a system that allows us to avoid be penalised for being told to do unscheduled jobs that are not critical. So if production personnel demand that the dripping tap be fixed today when it really could have waited for a day or three to be "scheduled", it doesn't count against us.

Work orders without start and end scheduled dates are considered unscheduled yet.

quote:

Originally posted by SHARKEY:
per my maintenance planner........a work order is scheduled when 1) it has a start date and a finish date 2) it has been assigned to a specific person

We say an order is scheduled when the (1) is done by the Maintenance Planner. The Maintenance Planner assigns the order to a maintenance crew (SAP's Main Work Center); then the Maintenance Supervisor (in charge of the Main Work Center) divides the scheduled orders for among his/her crew.

I know this is a bit late, but here is my take on scheduling of work orders:
A work order is scheduled when approved and placed on a weekly/daily schedule for execution. The estimated duration of the work order determines the ending of the schedule for that work order. All planning is done prior to the actual scheduling event. (Scheduling is time management, while planning is resource management.)
Am I far off base with others here?

The definition we use is "Maintenance scheduled before the beginning of a shift. Maintenance is not considered "planned" if production personnel are scheduled, materials, and supplies are scheduled, or there is demand for the product but it can not be produced due to mechanical failure." In other words if we can't run to the production schedule, it's not planned maintenance. Planned work can be incorporated into the schedule. The time frame varies according to the flexibility of your production schedule. We have until Friday noon to plan for the next week. After that the schedule is locked and we take the hit as unplanned.

Hello
I think we can call WO scheduled when we have all recourses to execute this WO in our hand and there are an agreement between all the involved discipline to execute that WO in specific date and time. I.e. planned WO required these resources confirmation to be as schedule WO:
1. Estimated man-hours required to execute a job.
2. Materials requirement (spare parts, consumable) .
3. hrs as shutdown for equipment identified and date/time specified.
4. Out source (external support, services) date shall identified and agreement shall be taken earlier.
5. Equipment, tools (e.g. crane).
When we have all of this with commitment from all involvement -i.e. operation, maintenance and support- we can call this WO scheduled regardless the execution will be tomorrow or after 6 weeks. (Commitment in weekly planning and scheduling meeting or in any other name meeting)

This is my definition of the scheduled WO

Regards
CD44

The subject of scheduling is fairly large. I am going to limit my response to Daily/Weekly scheduling. The best way for me to answer this is to provide an article I wrote for Maintenance Technology, March 2006.

http://www.mt-online.com/articles/0306_cmms_strategies.cfm?pf=1

When/if you did a 4 word search on the Internet ("the elusive weekly schedule") it is the most read article out of 250,000 hits.

Majority of all CMMS client sites are unable to generate a resource-leveled weekly schedule. You would think these 'best of breed' products' would have solved this puzzle by now.

This article is the design basis for a soltuon we call the RLP.

w/br
john reeve
Synterprise Solutions
423 267 5363

Hi John

Thanks for the link.

How about joining the discussion and providing some direct wisdom on the topic right here on the forum?

It sounds like you would have some valuable contributions.

Thanks

Terry O

Good terms and Bad Terms:
(1) BOW WAVE - when user enters start dates for work and this work does not start, and you find yourself picking up each scheduled job and re-placing it in the future

(2) RESOURCE-LEVELED - any generated schedule should be balanced against available availability

(3) SUBJECTIVE SELECTION - this is when supervisors manually select - based on memory - work that needs to be done for next week (taking into account the entire open backlog (~1000 work orders)) - and handling multi-craft availabilities during the course of the weekly schedule meeting

(4) OPPORTUNISTIC SCHEDULING - this is when the schedule selects a job and it is placed on next weeks schedule, and someone asks, "since this is at a remote location (we are driving to) wouldnt it make sense to query the database for work also at this location?". Answer is YES.

If you are using the term scheduled in the same vein and we use the word planned - and I am not sure if you are - then I would say the work is scheduled when it is carried out accordingly to its original intent.

For PM work, this is according to our annual maintenance schedule: if it isn't on there as of Jan 1 it is unplanned work. For PdM work, as long as the failure mode is identified by the technician in advance, we consider this planned work as it was done in accordance with our original intent (to discover faults and remedy by PdM).

We adopted this approach after hearing a convincing argument to this effect at the last RCM Conference in Hawaii...