No-no’s for the maintenance planner role
Organizations should have a clear work description of what a planner’s role is. The role may vary between organizations, mainly due to plant size. Some organizations have combined planners/supervisors. Some have dedicated planners for shutdowns/turnarounds. Many have people with a planner’s title, but no planning.
So, how do we figure out a planner’s role? The first step is to decide if you (as a plant) want to have planning. It would be a huge mistake to decide against planning in my opinion; but if you do, you might as well get rid of planners and/or the role of planning. Most of us will decide we should have planning.
We can’t figure out a clear role unless we first have a clear agreed-upon workflow that describes in which order we are going to pass on information, to whom, and who is responsible. The first step is, therefore, to design clear, agreed-upon workflows (business processes) for our daily work, shutdown work, etc. Once we have the workflows, we can start describing the role of planners (and others).
Be aware when you start describing the role that it is easy to describe all the things a planner should do in a lengthy document. I have seen role descriptions for planners that instruct the planner to do absolutely everything that no one else has time or wants to do. If you have an all-inclusive role description for planners in you plant, perhaps you need to think again. We are often afraid of having a description that allows a planner to say, “That is not my job.” But, I want to argue that it is critical that a planner says “no” to certain assignments. Why? That’s because your planners should primarily be planning. If you divert them in emergency work, special projects, supervision, etc., they will be doing those things and not planning.
When we at IDCON describe the planner’s role, we often start in the opposite end. We describe what a planner should not do, then describe what a planner should work on. We see the no-no list being used more than the actual work description in day-to-day work. What follows is a typical no-no list for a planner’s role.
A planner should not:
- Plan emergency work
- Act as a relief supervisor
- Become a material expeditor
- Work on tools
- Perform time-consuming clerical activities
- Plan from behind a desk only
- Become a “go-fer” for maintenance/operations supervisors
The reason for the no-no list is that all of the activities will reduce the amount of planned work you have in your facility.
Respond to this blog with questions related to planning as well as your stories of planning done well or planning not done well.
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Filed Under: Featured, Maintenance Excellence | Tags: maintenance, maintenance procedures, planning and scheduling, talent management
Comments
By Sebastien Cournoyer on March 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Great article Tor, I am a Maintenance Planner for a large electric utility company and unfortunately my job description look much more like your no-no list than what i really feel would add value to the organizations.
By Mark Brunner on April 19th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
We are currently in the process of splitting our planning and scheduling roles as the “Planners” spend most of their time scheduling and expiditing materials, so we are aligned with your thinking.
One of our schedulers has asked a very relevant question after reading this.
Is there a no,no’s for Schedulers?
By Tor Idhammar on April 28th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Mark, in my opinion, If the scheduling is a full time job, I think you could copy the planners list above since a planners role often are to “plan and schedule”. Nothing wrong with splitting the roles up. I’ve seen organizations with planners, schedulers and supervisors. I’ve seen organizations with only planners and schedulers and no supervisors because the hourly are well trained and work fairly independent. However, I have never believed in self governing groups for maintenance. There are a few exceptions where they have made it work, hats off to them, but in 99.9% of the time, 100% self governing groups for maintenance does not work.
By Tor Idhammar on April 28th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Sebastien, your situation is very common and often you are stuck with the role unless our organization commits to improved planning and scheduling as a joint partnership between operations and maintenance.
By Emmanuel Ikechukwu Onumadu on May 27th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Thanks for our pieces, but really, our employers need to know all the big differences between planning and all other sorts of roles / functions.
Have been working for over 10 years in Nigeria and found out that clear-cut job descriptions are often sacrificed for a reduction of over-heads.
This is not really safe for both employees and employers alike.
Finally, I ask could we carry out a survey of people around the world who actually know what a planners role should be?
By Art Durnan on June 11th, 2009 at 10:25 am
My experience with writing Planner/Scheduler Role descriptions is varied and I have seen a few good planning organizations and many poor performing ones. Typically Planners spend an inoridante amout of time expediting and purchasing. They are regularly visited by vendors who inflate their egos to maintian or get new business. One key issue with planning success is how good a work identification process an operation runs. If work can’t be identified early enough to schedule then effective planning will be impossible. As far as defining what a planner should not do: Not a Supervisor, Not a Buyer, Not an Expeditor for sure. What I have observed over many years is organizatons often focus on only planning and scheduling as the main part of an improvement process with the expection that downtime and cost will decrease.. They miss the other critical elements like creating effective maintenance tactics and having competent work identification, and root cause anaylsis processes. Tyring to put Planning and Scheduling in over a reactive organization just won’t produce the results. No wonder planners stay in expediting roles!
By Mark Brunner on June 11th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
To all readers of this article. In relation to Emmanuels comments I’d be willing to set up an on-line survey to help determine what people believe is a planners role. Would reliable plant be willing to publish it?
I expect it would include up to 10 questions and the responses would be avaliable for viewing immediately.
The survey would not be affilliated to any business and would be carried out through Surveymethods.com.
By Peter W on June 30th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
All,
l have recently taken a posting at a utilities co as maintenance planner.
l thought l had a good understanding of what direction needed to be taken but the more l delve into it the more confused l am. Can anyone out there recommend a book or the like that sets out how to build a maintenance system from go to whoa. Including software selection, risk analysis, kpi and a logical process to be followed
By Mark Brunner on June 30th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Hi Peter, Terry Wiremans Maintenance Strategy series of books is pretty usefull. There have been 4 books released in the series so far. Ricky Smiths Rules ofm Thumb for maintenace and reliability engineeers also has some good information on setting up systems in the first few chapters.
If you want some basic information have a look at my website.
http://www.thereliabilityroadmap.com. It may be of use.
Regards
Mark
By Sebastien Cournoyer on July 1st, 2009 at 4:21 am
From a Planning and Scheduling perspective, you must get a copy of our bible !!! Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook by Doc Palmer… It is specific to work management but you will find out that the basic applied to the core foundations of a good maintenance and reliability program. My suggestion would be not to try to read from end to end, but rather to quickly go through it and then use as needed for reference.
I will alos like to suggest the Reliable Plant magazine. Great folks writing good articles. You are talking about professional that have been doing this for may years, Mark Barnes, Doc Palmer, Tim Goshert… just to name a few…
By Tor Idhammar on August 19th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Peter,
I am biased in this suggestions for a book, but i think you will find the books very valuable. My reccommendations are IDCON’s practical guide to maintenance planning and scheduling and our results oriented reliability and maintenance. You can buy them from Amazon, Noria, or directly from http://www.idcon.com
Tor Idhammar