{"id":178272,"date":"2022-11-17T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fiix.wpengine.com\/?p=178272"},"modified":"2026-03-11T12:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T16:09:08","slug":"maintenance-planning-and-scheduling-best-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fiixsoftware.com\/blog\/maintenance-planning-and-scheduling-best-practices\/","title":{"rendered":"How to plan and schedule work orders like the best maintenance teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read the full work order academy series, including toolkits for better work orders, defeating backlog, using work order data, and more <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

What is maintenance planning?<\/h2>\n

Maintenance planning is a process of determining which assets or facilities need to be maintained, when they need to be maintained, and how often. The process also involves identifying the resources required for the maintenance\u2014for example, what spare parts and materials are needed. Maintenance planning makes sure that your assets are in good working condition and can help your organization be prepared for minor asset issues to major equipment failure<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Failing to plan, is planning to fail. We talk about this a lot in maintenance. We need to think about what the best way is to interact with the machine rather than number of times we are interacting with it. Doing a weekly PM may not be the right answer in all cases, and it may hurt the culture of the team as well. Finding the balance takes patience, and some trial and error.
– Jason Afara<\/a>, Manager, Solutions Engineer<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is the maintenance planning process?<\/h2>\n

In other words, how do you create a maintenance plan? There are critical tasks you\u2019ll need to do in order to set up a successful maintenance plan for your business\u2014and it\u2019s not as scary or as difficult as it sounds.<\/p>\n

Here are the five steps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Identify the critical assets that need to be maintained<\/li>\n
  2. Determine how often these assets should be maintained or checked on (based on their importance)<\/li>\n
  3. Create a maintenance plan based on those two steps<\/li>\n
  4. Schedule out when each asset will be worked on according to its scheduled maintenance interval (SMIs)<\/li>\n
  5. Execute your plan<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What happens when maintenance planning goes wrong?<\/h2>\n

    The maintenance team at Century Aluminum was fighting an uphill battle from day one.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe philosophy has been, \u2018It\u2019s what goes out the door that counts,\u201d said millwright Linda Sibley in this interview with Reliable Plant<\/a>, \u201cnot how well the machinery is running.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Pumping out products and equipment health being forgotten, was obviously not a sustainable model. It fueled a culture of reactive thinking, leading to lots of breakdowns, data shortages, low morale, and much more.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen you are in such a reactive mode, it\u2019s next to impossible to do much planning. It\u2019s all about putting out fires,\u201d said maintenance planner Todd Harrison.<\/p>\n

    Needless to say, there was a hunger for change. But despite the maintenance department\u2019s best efforts, the preventive maintenance program<\/a> struggled to get off the ground. The reason progress stalled could be linked back to one thing: Poor maintenance planning and scheduling.<\/p>\n

    Probably one-third of the PMs are no good,\u201d said maintenance manager Jim Doeffinger. \u201cWe waste time doing irrelevant PMs.\u201d<\/p>\n

    No one wants to constantly take two steps forward and one step back. That\u2019s why this post will go in-depth on best practices and simple frameworks for strong maintenance planning and work order scheduling.<\/p>\n

    How to get really good at maintenance planning<\/h2>\n

    There are two ingredients you need to be really good at maintenance planning:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Clear goals for maintenance that align with the goals of the organization<\/li>\n
    2. A way to prioritize maintenance activities based on your goals<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      All your work processes, schedules, training, and SOPs flow from your goals and priorities.<\/p>\n

      \u201cYou really need to go back to the fundamentals of the organization and find out what their objectives are for maintenance,\u201d says Charles Rogers, a Senior Implementation Consultant at Fiix with over 33 years of experience in maintenance and reliability.<\/p>\n

      Four steps for aligning maintenance goals with business goals<\/h3>\n

      A handy four-step process will help you align the organization\u2019s goals with your maintenance planning:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Confirm the goals of your organization<\/strong>. Your business may be looking to accomplish something really specific, like decreasing the cost-per-item. Or the goal might be a little less tangible, like entering new markets.<\/li>\n
      2. Link maintenance KPIs to business goals<\/strong>. If reducing the cost-per-item is the big goal, maintenance could focus on reducing downtime and maintenance costs<\/a>. If entering new markets is the target, you might want to standardize maintenance processes so they can be repeated at other sites.<\/li>\n
      3. Choose your maintenance metrics<\/strong>. Set up metrics and benchmarks so you can track progress and measure success. For example, if you want to prevent unplanned downtime, you might track faults found and fixed through PMs on critical equipment.<\/li>\n
      4. Plan maintenance activities to hit your targets<\/strong>. Let\u2019s say your aim is to find problems with critical equipment before they cause failure. In this scenario, you have to figure out what your critical equipment is<\/a>, how often it should be inspected, and what needs to be included in work orders for those assets.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Learn how to create world-class, standardized work orders <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

        \"Work<\/figure>\n

        Start connecting maintenance to business impact with this free goal-setting template<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

        What is maintenance scheduling?<\/h2>\n

        Maintenance scheduling is the process of planning, organizing, and coordinating all activities that need to be done by a maintenance department to keep machines in good working condition. Together maintenance planning and scheduling ensure that machines are kept in top condition at all times, which improves the quality of production. It also helps to avoid costly breakdowns and repairs by preventing problems before they occur.<\/p>\n

        Maintenance scheduling also gives maintenance personnel, like a scheduler or production supervisor more control over the finances of a maintenance team. For example, when your planned maintenance is scheduled ahead of time you reduce waste caused by unexpected costs due to equipment failure. This kind of planning is often referred to as preventative maintenance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

        How to get really good at maintenance scheduling<\/h2>\n

        \u201cSome people think a lot of scheduled maintenance is good and more is better,\u201d says Charles.<\/p>\n

        \u201cThose people are wrong. Doing PMs to fill a quota is costly and often increases the chance of breakdowns.\u201d<\/p>\n

        The number of failed inspections per PM is the true mark of scheduled maintenance success, says Charles. Every problem you catch during a PM is an asset failure avoided.<\/p>\n

        And that\u2019s the secret to really good maintenance scheduling<\/strong>: The constant tweaking of PM frequencies to find the right balance between too often and not often enough.<\/p>\n

        How to optimize preventive maintenance frequencies<\/h3>\n

        The PDCA model (Plan, Do, Check, Act) is a framework for finding the right PM schedule over time:<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Plan<\/strong>: Create a baseline for PM frequencies by looking at recommended guidelines, repair history, criticality, and usage patterns for an asset. The maintenance planner, supervisor, manager or team lead will generally take this step on.<\/li>\n
        2. Do<\/strong>: Follow your plan consistently for accurate results. The maintenance technician will be responsible for this step.<\/li>\n
        3. Check<\/strong>: Look at failure metrics for each asset to determine if your plan is working. The maintenance technician, team lead, supervisor or manager will be responsible for this step.<\/li>\n
        4. Act<\/strong>: Fine-tune your PM frequencies based on your findings. Increase the frequency if an asset is breaking down between PMs. Reduce the frequency if your PMs don\u2019t find failures or if the number of breakdowns between PMs is low. In this last step, the entire team will be responsible. It is a team effort and shouldn’t occur in a silo. Over communicating the changes and explaining why it’s occurring helps the team be open to change.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          \"PDCA<\/figure>\n

          Warning: This process is not quick. It takes a while to go around this cycle and implement improvements. But you will see improvements, including longer MTBF intervals<\/a>, fewer labor hours, and fewer costs for spare parts and supplies.<\/p>\n

          Start building an awesome preventive maintenance schedule with this scheduling template<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

          How to convince people that maintenance needs to be done<\/h2>\n

          \u201cWe would fight operations just to get a little bit of maintenance on a machine,\u201d says Jason Afara, a Solutions Engineer at Fiix, remembering his time as a maintenance manager.<\/p>\n

          Although the tension between maintenance and operations isn\u2019t going anywhere, a maintenance plan and schedule can\u2019t reach their full potential without buy-in from production.<\/p>\n

          \u201cThis is where maintenance departments usually fail because they don\u2019t have data to back up their asks,\u201d says Charles.<\/p>\n

          \u201cYou have to be able to prove your case and show evidence that if you don\u2019t do maintenance on schedule, there will be much worse consequences at some point\u2014probably sooner than later.\u201d<\/p>\n

          Creating a culture that chooses preventive maintenance over reactive maintenance doesn\u2019t happen in a day. It can take years and a lot of conversations with everyone from CEOs to operators for it to stick. Here are a few resources to get you off on the right foot when it comes to change management and to use data to change minds:<\/p>\n