Planning and Scheduling -- Yes you can talk to different people on this subject and actually not synch up until 15 minutes into the conversation. no worries.

On occasion I will hear someone say, "I plan to do that work next week". I take that sentence and replace it (in my head with), "...they are hoping to schedule the this work for next week".

Planning work (subject) is another conversation as you know.

"PLANNED WORK" - for me, I am calling this "scheduled work"....just so you know.

REACTIVE MAINTENANCE is (again, my definition) is any work which interrupts the Weekly Schedule. Note: Many consultants have much different definitions for this. What percentage reactive do you have each week? What techniques do you use to reduce this amount?

PM/PdM work is actually easy in terms of scheduling because the CMMS spits this out based on time or usage based schedules. It appears in the open backlog and automatically gets scheduled.

I see the scheduling of corrective maintenance (CM), resident in the open backlog, as a tougher nut to crack. The objective is to make a weekly schedule which has both PM/PdM and CM work. If you take a moment to read my Maintenance Technology (The Elusive Weekly Schedule) article this will be more obvious.

What is your weekly schedule compliance? Are you able to measure this inside your CMMS product? or do you have to do it in Access or Excel?

I know there are alot of KPI's and benchmarks which use the terms "planned" and proactive and reactive. I try to keep it simple.

w/br
john reeve
Synterprise Solutions
Office: 423 267 5363
jreeve@synterprise.com

REACTIVE MAINTENANCE is (again, my definition) is any work which interrupts the Weekly Schedule.

Thanks John for the reactive maintenance definition (it's not only yours) – the whole concept of what planning and scheduling is all about often gets lost in trying to define reactive work. The original question is so easy to answer if we consider basic scheduling objectives, thus – “The work assigned to an approved daily schedule is considered unscheduled if it did not appear as scheduled on the approved weekly schedule for that work week.” These unscheduled jobs are obstacles in achieving the goal of schedule compliance. I call these “Identified Interruptions” in that each must be coded to the type of interruption. Example, Emergency – Equipment related work that interrupted today’s schedule, Urgent – Equipment related work not to be done on today’s schedule but cannot wait until next week. We utilize these 2 codes to identify and support reliability improvements. There are several others but my favorite is “Management Direction”. Often management makes a decision to utilize maintenance resources without going through the scheduling process – they have the right – but this code allows us to identify how much they impact our ability for accomplish work in an efficient manner. David A Martin CMRP

Thanks David.
Maybe we can expand this dialog by identifying the various types of schedules.

DAILY SCHEDULE -- "plan of the day"; definitely a must; shows on-going work and who is doing what; sometimes a meeting - where they discuss logistics, coordination and safety concerns.

WEEKLY SCHEDULE -- not all clients have this. But many of us believe that this is the ideal schedule. It represents the best lookahead in time (without going too far) to allow for departmental coordination. Ops can make tagouts. Warehouse can stage parts. Maintenance can see in advance the work they need to prepare for and line up personnel. The DAILY should be built from this weekly.
Also note: this is a weekly baseline which means it is not be be changed. You can change the Daily however, ie adding "interrupts". Compliance is against the weekly. 80% is target.

LRP - Long Range Plan. This is a schedule which shows future work of significance. It may still be in engineering. It may or may not be approved - or even have budget. The 'date' on it may be "1st quarter" of next year. As this event gets closer then management makes the scope more exact - and assigns specific target dates.

Nuclear industry has a "rolling system window" concept whereby they focus on plant system focus depending on what week of the year they are in. This is advanced technology.


Discoveries I have made over the years - traveling the world:

>> Doc Palmer has a good book on Weekly Scheduling

>> Many plants do not have planner/schedulers but do have a CMMS product. Unfortunately there is little craft planning.

>> Craft planning means 'entry is made inside the CMMS product' as opposed to planning work in your head

>> Backlog exists, but is mostly unplanned (meaning no craft estimates); data is mostly inaccurate inside the CMMS (alot of the same priorities) (inaccurate status codes)

>> 80% of all sites are unable to create a resource-leveled weekly schedule using their CMMS product

>> Some sites may have a 'best of breed' CMMS/EAM product but are primarily using it for entering actual manhours (to account for payroll activity) - no failure analysis, no real planning

I really don't mean to sound pessimistic. But I am trying to increase awareness of where the industry might be. The good news is, if the client desires to improve process, substantial benefits can be realized (without increasing staff).

w/br
j.r.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by John Reeve:
Thanks David.
Maybe we can expand this dialog by identifying the various types of schedules.

Agreed – Daily Schedule generated a day in advance utilizing those jobs from the Weekly (scheduled) to include new added work (unscheduled) and carryover. You state, “WEEKLY SCHEDULE -- not all clients have this.” I’ve heard the same but if you create daily’s why not weekly’s? I often hear and had to cross the same hurdle, “How can we predict what we are going to do next week when we cannot even predict what we are doing tomorrow?” OK – you now recognize the mind set is that you are in reactive mode. My response, “How can you predict what you are going to do next week if you never make a prediction?”

I think the reason for not having a weekly schedule is either the above or people do not recognize what you stated “Also note: this is a weekly baseline which means it is not to be changed. You can change the Daily however, ie adding "interrupts". Compliance is against the weekly. 80% is target.” I’ve heard people saying they go back and adjust the weekly schedule for added work, etc. This is a no no and provides no value. Compliance is comparing the actual work accomplished that was schedule on the advance weekly schedule. If the work preformed on the daily did not appear on the weekly it is unscheduled thus not compliant.

Weekly schedules is the best practice and every effort should be made to generate them. Why? My belief is to readily identify Interruptions. By identifying those things that hinder us from being able to make a prediction of the work we hope to accomplish next week we give ourselves criteria and justification for improving. Repetitive Emergency and Urgent interruptions need to be addressed and having documented occurrences will support action. I use the repetitive 11’s and 12’s per asset or system to generate support from engineering to help resolve reliability issues.

Lastly, we started from not being able to predict tomorrow’s work to an average compliance of 68% between to locations. Not yet where we want to be but we have a tool to identify improvements and track progress.

I wonder if there are other resons for not having a weekly. May be a good forum discussion.

In this discussion about scheduled work, I have to ask the question. Does all scheduled work in your world mean the same thing as planned or practive work?
Where do modifications, projects and capital time and labor account to in your systems.

Larry Hoing CMRP

"all scheduled work"
or
"all planned work"?

backlog consists of all open work...including capital/project related work plus normal repair plus PM/PdM.

Work is planned when it has estimates on it for craft and men and hours (and much more).

Work is scheduled when it is placed on the schedule.

Reactive maintenance is doing work not on the weekly schedule.