Effective maintenance planning and scheduling are essential to prevent unplanned asset failures from dictating your schedules and driving your budgets. In a reactive, unplanned environment, maintenance efforts falter—funds meant for proactive upkeep are instead wasted on waiting for parts, delayed equipment transfers, and emergency fixes that disrupt planned work. This leads to excess spending, diminished asset reliability, and increased unscheduled downtime.

The seven steps outlined in this article enable effective maintenance scheduling and resource optimization. By capturing detailed planning and scheduling data, you gain the metrics needed to assess how well key processes—planning, scheduling and work execution—are performing. Without accurate performance measurement, you lose the ability to establish a baseline and set standards for continuous improvement.

Step 1: Determine How Performance Will Be Measured

A maintenance strategy and asset management plan are not enough. You need to know if the documented strategy and plan are being followed. How do you know if you are adhering to documented processes and performing your maintenance activities as planned and scheduled? Simple, you measure it.

The two key questions to ask are:

• What do you want to measure?
• What data will be required to drive those metrics and reports?

Taking this perspective will help guide your decisions for the better as the organization moves forward on its continuous improvement journey. You will save time and money, and reduce frustration with stakeholders at all levels by thinking about your end goals from the start.

For example, say you want to measure planned or ready backlog to help balance craft resources to the amount of work that needs to be executed. The work plans need to have enough detail for each activity on the work order, including duration and required crafts, and how many of each craftsperson is planned. This is true for preventive and corrective maintenance work orders.

This information can be then used for reporting how many hours of work are ready to be executed for each craft. Without this information, management has no way of knowing if there are too many or too little craft resources. Monitoring a report like this can help make informed business decisions based on high-quality and timely data and emerging trends.

Don’t know what to measure or how to measure it? A great resource to help get you moving in the right direction is the SMRP Best Practices, published by the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP). It includes more than 70 detailed metrics that can be tailored to your organization’s needs.

Step 2: Standardize and Document Processes

Standardizing and documenting your processes is essential for creating repeatable, sustainable and adaptable workflows. When processes are standardized, you can consistently monitor their effectiveness and make data-driven adjustments. Without a set standard, team members may plan, schedule and execute work based on personal preference, leading to inconsistencies and unreliable data in your maintenance management system.

For example, if a scheduler frequently changes the scheduling routine, both maintenance and operations can become confused, causing day-to-day and week-to-week disruptions. This unpredictability frustrates stakeholders and erodes trust in the schedule. Furthermore, without standardization, it's impossible to accurately measure performance and identify areas for improvement.

Step 3: Categorize (Code) Work by Work Type

Every work order should be coded to reflect the type of work it involves. Proper coding not only enables more detailed reporting, but also helps schedulers create a balanced schedule with the right mix of tasks. Standard work types include preventive maintenance (PM), corrective maintenance (CM), and minor or punch list tasks. While emergencies can be coded as a work type, their reactive nature usually means an initial work order is created to address the urgent issue, with a follow-up work order planned and scheduled later based on priority.

Preventive maintenance

PM work orders are crucial for keeping assets running smoothly by addressing wear and tear before failures occur. They should be fully integrated into your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), set up with data triggers that generate work orders ahead of due dates to ensure proper scheduling. As the foundation of your maintenance schedule, PM work orders must be prioritized and continuously managed to maintain compliance. By adhering to PM schedules, you can assess the effectiveness of your asset management plan, optimize maintenance tasks, and adjust frequencies when necessary. In short, following documented processes for PM work orders is essential for evaluating and enhancing maintenance performance.

Corrective maintenance

When a service request (SR) is submitted, it indicates a failure has already occurred. If the failure doesn’t warrant an emergency work order, a corrective work order is created, planned and prioritized. It's crucial to assign the correct asset so failure codes, often referred to as problems, causes and remedies (PCRs), can be recorded and later analyzed against the asset and its class when enough data is available.

The planner develops a comprehensive work package for the CM work order. This package details all required activities, including assigned tasks, the necessary crafts and quantities, spare parts, additional materials (both stock and nonstock), drawings, piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), equipment manuals, personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements, safety documentation, etc. Once approved, materials are ordered and the work order is updated and placed into the ready backlog, assuming nothing else is preventing its execution.

Punch list or simple maintenance

A punch list does not mean simple tasks not assigned to an asset, without a work order. Rather, a punch list is simple maintenance work orders that have the same basic requirements of a corrective or PM work order. Most important with a punch list work order is that the correct asset is identified.

To add clarity, here are some general criteria for this type of work:

• Usually lower priority work.
• Does not require planning; the craftspeople can either make the repair or provide additional information / notes on what was found so a follow-up work order can be created, planned and scheduled.
• Does not require any support craft assistance, which provides the maintenance supervisor flexibility to do the work without coordinating with other crafts. For example, a scaffold is not required to gain access to the asset.
• Does not require any materials to be ordered. The work can be completed with stock storeroom items. If the job turns out to be more complex than thought, a follow-up corrective work order should be created and sent through the normal planning / scheduling process.
• The estimated duration of the work is only a couple of hours, usually two or three. The idea is to use these jobs as fill-in work when regularly scheduled work cannot be done. Quick wins! It keeps the craft resources working, maintaining assets and adding value.
• Has a specific code or work type, making it easy for supervisors to find work that meets the above criteria, for example, simple or minor maintenance, or punch list.
• It is an approved work order written against an asset.

Step 4: Identify Available Resources

To effectively build the maintenance schedule, it's essential to know how much work you can realistically assign based on resource availability. This starts with understanding the headcount available for each resource type in the scheduling pool. The craft supervisor should provide this information weekly for the upcoming execution period, ensuring it’s updated in the scheduling software or made available to the scheduler in a reliable manner.

While craft levels may remain consistent, any changes must be reflected in the schedule to adjust resources accordingly. Resources should be updated by the end of the current execution period for the upcoming week, accounting for factors like training and vacations. One key goal for the scheduler is to create a realistic, attainable schedule. To set up the maintenance crews for success, ensure the amount of planned work matches the available resources.

Labor is a valuable resource, and its full utilization is critical to efficiency. Scheduling resources at or near 100 percent availability helps avoid inefficiencies in the scheduling process. Planning work orders with the appropriate resources and crafts ensures every task is aligned with available resources during scheduling. Understanding what crafts are needed and when they’re available is fundamental for effective scheduling. Schedulers should monitor the craft labor histogram, which displays how many hours are allocated to each craft. When reviewing histograms, ask yourself: Is there too much work scheduled? Is there too little? Or is the craft right at 100 percent capacity, suggesting no more work should be scheduled for that period? By carefully managing labor allocation, you establish an attainable schedule that sets up maintenance execution for success while preventing both underscheduling and overscheduling.

Step 5: Building the Maintenance Schedule

Now that the building blocks of the maintenance schedule have been covered, let’s move on to what a solid scheduling process looks like. Let’s start by defining a maintenance schedule in weeks. The current week is the execution period. Week 1 is the review period, where buy-ins are obtained from maintenance, operations and procurement by the end of the execution period. Weeks 2, 3 and beyond are filled with work by the scheduler.

Work orders are scheduled based on a documented, standardized process. Figure 4 is a high-level example. Depending on the maturity of your maintenance organization and condition and age of your assets, the ratio of PM to CM work orders will vary.

1. Preventive maintenance work is the priority. PMs should be configured to generate work orders on a set frequency, well in advance of their due date. This provides the time needed to schedule and coordinate with operations if needed. PM work orders are the foundation of the maintenance schedule and staying in PM compliance helps avoid equipment breakdowns and emergency work. It is critical for the scheduler to schedule PM work orders so they can be coordinated and completed before they become overdue.
2. Corrective maintenance work orders should fill in the schedule based on resource availability. They should be scheduled by priority, age and resource availability.

Step 6: Schedule Meetings

Buy-in meetings

Buy-in meetings are essential for ensuring alignment and commitment to the maintenance schedule for the upcoming execution period (the following week). During these meetings, key stakeholders review the schedule and confirm their responsibilities. The operations team agrees to hand over assets based on their understanding of the production or operations schedule. Maintenance ensures the necessary resources, including personnel and equipment, are available to execute the work. Procurement verifies all required materials are on-site and properly kitted. Stakeholders identify potential conflicts, such as resource shortages related to craft, special equipment, tools, or timing issues, and work together to resolve them. The final schedule is then revised based on these discussions, ensuring all parties are aligned and prepared for the upcoming week.

Daily updates and what will be worked tomorrow

In the execution period, schedule meetings are held daily to review the work planned for the following day. Before these meetings, maintenance supervision provides updates on the current day’s work and the revised schedule is shared and reviewed with stakeholders in the meeting. These meetings typically take place toward the end of each day. Some work will be in progress, new tasks will be starting, and completed work will fall off the schedule.

At this point, the focus is on maintenance that is going to be worked, not reviewing what was worked. The schedule is dynamic and should always accurately represent the work being performed. For the process to be effective, maintenance supervision must consistently update the schedule each day. Reviewing tomorrow’s work today helps line up tasks and efficiently deploy the right crafts the next morning, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned on the plan for the day ahead.

Plan, do, check, act

Following key principles, such as the plan-do-check-act process, allows you to better understand the importance of consistently monitoring your processes to assess their effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement. Reliability is an ongoing journey that demands continuous refinement, as various factors can impact your processes over time.

Step 7: Avoid Evil Adversaries That Negatively Impact the Maintenance Schedule

• Emergency work. High costs and resources will be pulled away from planned, scheduled work.
• Low quality work packages. Work plans lack scope detail and accuracy for tasks, duration and assigned crafts.
• Not managing scope growth for ongoing scheduled work. Scheduled work continues to grow, pushing out other scheduled work. The scope needs to be managed appropriately after work begins.
• Crafts and maintenance supervisors do favors when asked or called instead of working the schedule.
• Scheduled work orders not having a status or daily progress updates. This reduces the accuracy of the daily schedule updates, impacting the overall maintenance schedule.
• Scheduling work without verifying all materials are available to start the work. How much does that cost each time it happens in planned labor alone? Not to mention production losses.
• Sending maintenance crews to the same location within days or a week. Schedule / consolidate work for the same asset at the same time when possible. For example, schedule PM and CM work orders at the same time.
• Low quality, ready to schedule backlog. Keep it clean. Review quarterly or biannually. The scheduler should have a quality backlog of work to review and schedule work from.
• Equipment not ready for maintenance at the scheduled time. More wasted time mobilizing for work that can’t be done due to operations schedule or not being able to isolate equipment.
• Crafts not showing up to work the asset at the scheduled time. It’s a two-way street, a partnership. Operations expect the crafts to show up when they are supposed to when equipment is taken out of service for maintenance.

Conclusion

Skilled maintenance professionals are eager to leverage their expertise, but they need robust processes and standards to succeed. It's management’s responsibility to implement these frameworks, enabling teams to maintain assets effectively and add real value.

Among the key benefits of adopting proven maintenance planning and scheduling methods are:

• Planned and scheduled work is safer than responding to emergencies.
• Planned and scheduled work costs less than emergency work.
• Standards for planned and scheduled work make it possible to monitor maintenance and process effectiveness and improve as needed.
• Planned and scheduled work supports effective use of maintenance resources.
• Improved productivity – do more with less.
• Planned and scheduled work leads to improved asset performance and reliability.
• Supports organizational objectives successfully.
• Effective communication tool – operations and maintenance know who is going to work on what and when.

Get started today on optimizing operations by implementing the seven steps to effective maintenance planning and scheduling.