How to implement maintenance planning & scheduling

Erik Hupjé
Written by:
P L A N N I N G & S C H E D U L I N G
www.reliabilityacademy.com

Table of contents
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Overview
A structured approach to implementing
maintenance planning and scheduling
The 6 steps to implement maintenance planning
and scheduling
The importance of ‘hard’ change management
Phase 1: Setup
Phase 2: Define
Phase 3: Develop
Phase 4: Implement
Phase 5: Close Out
Phase 6: Sustain
About the author
Copyright © 2017-2023
R2 Reliability Pty Ltd
2 Reliability Academy | How to implement maintenance planning & scheduling
Tools & resources

Overview
Most organisations that implement maintenance planning and scheduling do not
achieve the long-term results they expected. Often the improvements don’t last, even
when the initial implementation seemed successful. But, it doesn’t have to be like
that. This article outlines a structured, proven approach that has worked in many
organisations. An approach using basic project management principles. Combined
with a strong focus on change management.
3
Reliability Academy | How to implement maintenance planning & scheduling

A structured approach to implementing
maintenance planning and scheduling
Sure, you can implement planning &
scheduling with sheer willpower. You
can do it without change management
or project management. But the
results you get are not sustainable.
What you put in place will be reliant on
a few strong individuals in the orga-
nisation. As soon as some of these
individuals leave or move on to new
roles the maintenance planning
process falls apart. The scheduling
process falls apart. And you lose most
if not all your gains. I’ve seen it time
and again.
And it’s such a waste of your efforts.
Without a structured project
management approach, your
implementation of planning &
scheduling will fail – sooner or later.
And without a focus on change
management or engaging stakehol-
ders, you will fail too. You will get stuck
due to resistance. Stake-holders that
could have been on your side become
blockers. As a result, you end up with
a lot of re-work or having to restart
your implementation. You don’t want
to be doing that, it’s hard and it’s
frustrating.
In big organisations, a project manage-
ment approach is essential to success.
But, even in small organi-sations a
project management approach will
increase your chance of success. It will
help to keep you on track. It will make
sure you don’t skip essential steps. And
it helps with sustaining the changes
you’ve made. Remember, you want
lasting change, not another initiative.
You want lasting change,
not initiatives

5
The 6 steps to implement maintenance
planning and scheduling
In the rest of this article, I’ll explain the
end-to-end implementation process.
Which is broken up into the following
six phases:
Phase 1: Setup – the setup phase
is all about ensuring you are setup
for success. That you have leader-
ship support and resources are in
place. That you have built a clear
case for change. That you identified
key stakeholders and put an initial
communications plan in place.
Phase 2: Define – in this phase you
analyse the current situation.
What’s called the “As Is” after which
you map out the desired end state.
The so-called “To Be”.
Phase 3: Develop – based on our
“To Be” you define in detail your
new process, roles and respon-
sibilities. You make the necessary
changes in supporting systems (e.g.
your CMMS). And you develop the
training and coaching programs.
Phase 4: Implement – this is
where the rubber hits the road.
You engage the organisation. You
train and coach your staff until the
new process has become the way
work gets done.
Phase 5: Close Out – with the
change implemented, you conduct
an assessment to ensure that the
planning & scheduling process will

stand the test of time. And improve
rather than unravel when you step
back. You identify lessons learned
and develop a plan to sustain the
change.
Phase 6: Sustain – Making a
change is easy, making it stick is a
lot harder. At the end of your
implementation, you need to put in
place practices that will help you
sustain what you’ve implemented.
Think performance indicators and
annual process reviews.
I recommend that at the end of each
phase you conduct a formal progress
review with your (leadership) sponsor
This review is to make sure that
everything that should have been done
has been done. Getting it right first
time is key to your success.
6
Change efforts have low success rates,
no matter what industry or which
discipline. Implementing change often
leads to failure. Many surveys and
studies suggest that up to 70% of
change efforts fail to meet their
objectives.
Many sources attribute these failures
to poor management of people issues.
The so-called ‘soft issues’. There are
two problems with these soft issues.
The first is that most people managing
change in the maintenance & reliability
space are often not in tune with ‘soft’
issues. But you can learn to deal with
soft issues.
The second and a much bigger
problem is that soft issues can be hard
to measure or predict. They differ from
change project to change project. Soft
issues are very dependent on the
organisation undergoing the change.
And the nature of the change. Trying to
identify soft issues upfront or during
an implementation is tough.
The importance of
‘hard’ change
management

And there are few reliable frameworks
or tools to help you do so consistently.
So, what to do?
Well, in the past I’ve successfully used
a framework developed by the Boston
Consulting Group (BCG). A framework
called ‘DICE’.
You see, the Boston Consulting Group
did extensive research to determine
what works when implementing
change. Not surprisingly as success-
fully implementing change is core to
any management consultancy’s
business. But interestingly, BCG’s
research concluded that four ‘hard’
factors are key to successfully
implementing change. More so than
‘soft’ issues.
The four ‘hard’ factors in the ‘DICE’
framework are:
Duration of the change program.
Or if it’s a long-term change, the
duration between milestone
reviews.
Integrity, which in the BCG
approach is all about having the
right skills on board.
Commitment from both the top
management and those affected by
the change.
Effort above the normal workload.
7
And these are all factors you can
identify upfront and address as you
progress. This is something you can
actually work with. The framework is
well described in a 2005 article in the
Harvard Business Review titled “The
Hard Side of Change Management”.
I will also cover ‘DICE’ and other
practical change management tools in
detail in future training courses.
So when it comes to implementing
change, whether it’s planning &
scheduling or something else, adopt a
framework like ‘DICE’. This helps you
stay on top of your change program at
all times.
‘DICE’ framework
Duration
Integrity
Commitment
Effort

a clear case for change. That you have
identified and engaged all key stake-
holders. And that you have an initial
communications plan in place.
Remember the Demming quote “Every
organisation is perfectly aligned for the
results it gets.” This also applies here.
Getting leadership on board is the
most important step in this phase. It’s
key to your success and something you
will need to pay a lot of attention to
during the setup phase.
Don’t assume that just because this is
the right thing to do that you have or
which will get leadership support. You
need to sell it to them as I explained in
my article How to sell planning and
scheduling to your CEO.
You need to identify all stakeholders
that can influence the success of
And deal with ‘soft’ issues as follows:
Have a very clear case for change
and communicate it often and well.
Communicate more than seems
necessary. The old advice to com-
municate every key message 7
times in 7 different ways is sound.
Just do it.
Actively listen to those who are
making the change. And even more
so to those affected by the change
– your success depends on it.
Expect and plan for resistance.
Be very clear what the benefits are
of the change both for your orga-
nisation as well as individuals
impacted by the change. And be
firm – once you have leadership
support in place make clear that
this is the direction the
organisation is taking. If someone
does not want to be part of the
journey, they may well need to get
off the bus.
Phase 1: Setup
This setup phase is all about ensuring
you’re set up for success. That you
have leadership support and resources
are in place. That you have developed
8
“Every organisation
is perfectly aligned
for the results it gets.”
- W. Edwards Demming

Planning & Scheduling in your
organisation. And for each of them
determine whether they are a
supporter or a blocker. The best way to
find this out is to simply talk to them.
Face to face if it’s possible.
After you’ve talked to all your
stakeholders, analyse their positions.
Determine how you will engage
potential blockers and ask supporters
to help you. Develop a detailed
communications strategy with specific
messages for specific stakeholders.
Have more general communication
ready to engage the organisation as a
whole.
At this point you should have enough
insight to determine which leader
would make your best project sponsor.
It should be someone with enough
authority to help you resolve any
major blockers. It should be someone
who sees the value planning &
scheduling will bring to your
organisation.
Develop a clear and succinct Project
Charter outlining:
What you are trying to achieve;
Why it matters;
How you’ll deliver the required
change;
How long it will take;
Who will be assisting you;
What resources you need;
And which leader will be your
Project Sponsor.
Get this leader to sign the Project
Charter before it is shared with the
organisation.
I strongly recommend forming a small
Steering Committee consisting of your
Project Sponsor and key line mana-
gers. People like the Operations
Manager, Maintenance Manager, or
the Engineering Manager. The Steering
Committee should be your sounding
board. They sign off on major
decisions and help you address
9

roadblocks when you hit them.
Conduct short and crisp monthly
progress meetings with your Steering
Committee.
And hold formal Milestone Reviews at
the end of each Phase. At Milestone
Reviews the Steering Committee
should challenge you to show that
everything is in place for the next
Phase. This brings commitment and
ownership. Plus, it ensures that the
delivery team does not avoid certain
tasks.
We’ve seen people avoid stakeholder
mapping early in their implementation
only to later regret it when their overall
delivery was at risk. Don’t do this. Use
formal Milestone Reviews to avoid
these kinds of problems.
One of the key things you need to do
in the Setup phase is to baseline
current performance. It will help you
later on to quantify the value of what
you’ve delivered.
If you don’t have planning and
scheduling in place you may not be
tracking any relevant metrics to use as
a baseline. In this case, you should at
least establish your baseline wrench
time (productivity).
Since you’ll be taking a project ma-
nagement approach you’ll need to
develop and maintain the usual tools
like:
A project schedule;
Budget;
Resource allocation;
Risk register.
I can’t go into the details of how to use
these tools here, but I do in my
Maintenance planning and scheduling
course.
Before you complete phase 1, one of
the key things to consider is your
coaching capability.
Do you have people in your
organisation that can act as coaches
following the initial training phase?
Or do you need to engage external
coaches for a period of time?
Don’t make the mistake of skipping on
the coaching phase as that will doom
your implementation. Coach selection
is key to your success. And you need to
look more at coaching capabilities than
detailed technical know-how. The latter
can be much easier trained and
developed than coaching capability.

Phase 2: Define
The second phase is all about ana-
lysing your current situation. About
identifying the problems you currently
face in the execution of your main-
tenance. After which you not only
agree on how to fix those problems
but also how to embed best practices
in your new planning & scheduling
process. Once that’s done you need to
map out this new process in detail.
You typically do this in a facilitated
workshop environment. Get a group
together that represent all parts of
your maintenance execution process.
People who work in that process every
day and therefore completely under-
stand what really happens. Include a
couple of key managers or supervisors.
And get representatives from support
processes like procurement, finance,
and the warehouse.
In simple terms in the workshop what
you will ask them to do is to map out
the existing maintenance planning &
scheduling process:
How does work get initiated?
How do you prioritise work?
Does it get planned?
Where do you get critical information
like technical drawings or equipment
manuals?
How do you get materials?
How do you treat stock versus once-
off purchases?
Do you expedite materials? Or track
their ETA?
How do you call off services? How do
you initiate the request and
purchase order?
When you do isolate the equipment?
How do you deal with (special) tools?
How do you decide what work gets
done when?
Do you run a weekly schedule?
How do you reschedule work that
wasn’t completed?
How do you deal with rework?
How does technical history get
entered?
How do you trigger payment of
invoices for services?
How do you return materials to the
warehouse?
Who reviews the technical history?
Does the planner get any feedback
on his job plan?
11
There is a structured process
called “AS IS – TO BE” that I
like to use for this.

Map it all out, warts and all. Show all
the steps, all the decisions, all the
rework. All the forms and paperwork.
Make sure you capture all the
inefficiencies and make them clearly
visible. That way the need to improve
and simplify the process becomes self-
explanatory.
Once you’ve got the AS – IS process up
on the wall, get the group to step back.
Brainstorm what goes well and what
needs improvement. Use different
colour post-it notes.
Red for improvement and green for
things that work well. Put them on the
flow chart where they relate to the
process. Cluster them and identify key
themes that come out.
At this point you move away from the
AS – IS process. Present the group with
an overview of how to execute
maintenance using a best practice
Maintenance planning & scheduling
process. This should be the starting
point of your TO – BE process.
Get the team to identify the main gaps
in the AS – IS compared to the best
practices you’ve just talked them
through. With the gaps defined spend
the rest of the time working through
what you need to do to address those
gaps. With your new TO – BE process
defined you’ll need new roles &
responsibilities. So, have a go at
fleshing these out whilst you have the
team together. Equally important is
that you need to identify the gaps in
your existing systems and data.

Things to consider are:
Is your CMMS setup to do
everything you now need?
Does the CMMS support the work
request priorities you need?
Can you tag work orders by the
different stages they’re in?
Can you track performance metrics
like Schedule Compliance?
And in terms of data:
Do you have a large, aged backlog
in your CMMS that’s going to make
your planner’s life hard?
Do you need to clean this up first?
Make sure that at the end of your AS IS
– TO BE workshop you bring your
Leadership Sponsor in. Walk him
through both the AS – IS process, and
the TO – BE process. It will help
enormously with creating that
leadership support you so need.
Using the output of your AS IS – TO BE
workshop develop a high-level
implementation plan. Update your
communications plan that you will
maintain throughout the project. And
make sure you send out some
communications around the outcome
and success of your AS IS – TO BE
workshop.
7
13

Phase 3: Develop
Phase 3 is all about preparing for the
delivery phase. In this phase, you need
to get all the process maps and sup-
porting documentation ready. Prepare
all the training material. Get a detailed
communications plan in place. Develop
your training schedule. Last but not
least, you get your team competent to
deliver the required training and
coaching.
To begin, take your TO – BE process
from phase 2 and develop that into a
detailed and well-documented main-
tenance planning & scheduling
process. In terms of flowcharts, I like
so-called swimlanes. They show in a
very intuitive and simple way who does
what and when in the process.
Make sure that you clearly document
what must be done in each process
step so there is no doubt whatsoever.
Where possible define standard CMMS
transactions and screens for everyone
to use.
With the process documentation
complete it is time to develop the
training material. You will be training a
large group of people. All with different
roles and different levels of under-
standing. Often also with very
varying degrees of interest in the
process.
I find that running a single overview
session for everybody followed by role-
specific training works best. It mini-
mises ‘down time’. And people don’t
have to sit through many days of
training with a lot of content that’s not
relevant to them.
I’ve also seen organisations take every-
body through the same multi-day
training course. Their primary aim was
to get everybody on a level playing
field. But that’s a big commitment and
can lead to frustration.

Both approaches can work. So, choose
what fits your organisation and your
people best.
Irrespective of how you structure your
training develops a simple competency
matrix. It summaries what knowledge
and skill are required for different
roles.
You see, a supervisor requires a
different level of understanding of
planning & scheduling than say an
operator does. Making this differen-
tiation helps you to focus your training
and coaching efforts where they are
most required.
At this point, you also need to look at
any major gaps in your CMMS.
Most organisations find at this point
that their CMMS is full of backlog. With
too much clutter in your CMMS it’s
going to be very hard for your planners
and schedulers to run an efficient
process. So clean it up.
Now, you don’t have to get everything
perfect at this point. But make sure
you can support the basic planning &
scheduling process as you’ve defined
it. And from there you can make
continuous improvements as you
progress.
Before your Milestone Review with
your Steering Committee update your
Communications Plan. Make sure you
are 110% ready to start delivering. And
be ready to track some simple leading
indicators to confirm the right change
is happening in the organisation.
You see, most organisations focus on
indicators like Schedule Compliance or
Emergency Work. But experience
shows that it can take several weeks
before those improve noticeably. So
complement these metrics with some
temporary indicators that measure the
change progress from the get-go.
Do you have the right
work order status codes
in place?
Can you generate the
right reports or metrics?
1.
2.
Look at any major gaps
in your CMMS.
15

A simple, easy, and effective change
measure is something called Meeting
Effectiveness. For each key meeting in
your process develop a Terms of
Reference and simple quality criteria.
Get your coach to score the meetings
using a standard template in which
you award points for:
The right people attending;
Adhering to the agenda;
Having the right discussions;
And making the right type of
decisions.
Provide immediate feedback to all
attendees at the end of the meeting.
Do this for the following meetings:
Weekly schedule review meeting.
Weekly planning meeting.
Daily review meeting.
Tracking meeting effectiveness gives a
lot of insight into how well your change
effort is progressing. Especially when
you’re dealing with multiple sites and
or multiple shifts. Once meetings
become effective your ‘hard’ metrics
like Schedule Compliance will soon
improve.
With this in place identify clear mile-
stones you aim to achieve and by
when e.g.
90% of staff trained after 1 month.
75% of staff assessed as competent
after 3 months.
75% of meetings deemed effective
after 1 month.
70% Schedule Compliance after 6
months.
Combine milestones like these with the
meeting effectiveness scores into a
single s-curve. This is a great tool to
share progress – or the lack of it! – with
your stakeholders and the wider
organisation.

17
Phase 4: Implement
This is where the rubber hits the road.
This is where it gets real. You engage
the organisation. You train and coach
until you have embedded the new
process in the day-to-day work
practices.
A good practice is to hold a visible,
well-communicated kick-off session.
Make sure your Leadership Sponsor
and all members of your Steering
Committee attend this kick-off. Have
them explain why planning &
scheduling is critical to your organi-
sation’s success. Get them to show
their support and commitment.
After the kick-off, take everyone
through a 1-day overview session. Use
this day to explain:
The case for change;
The planning & scheduling process;
How it will benefit them;
How you will implement it.
Make sure training is crisp, action-
focused, and targeted. People hate
sitting through 3 days of training that
they’ll never use.
Straight after the training move into
the coaching phase. I find that a
3-month coaching period is just right.
It offers enough time for the coaches
to get to know all people involved. To
assess their competence gaps. And to
spend time with everyone individually
to help close those gaps.
Some people get there fast, others can
take much longer. But on average
three months should give you enough
time. If you run a shift system where
people are only at site half the time
increase the three months to six.
Make sure you never let your coaches
work in the process but that they
always work on the process.
Coaches work on the
process never in the process

18
You do not want your coaches sitting
behind a PC and raising notifications.
Or worse, planning work orders in the
CMMS. That leads to disasters. The
organisation starts to rely on the
coaches doing the work rather than
their own people. Handholding is fine,
just never ever do the actual work.
As you go through your implemen-
tation track progress on a weekly basis
with the s-curve I discussed in phase 3.
Celebrate some early successes. And
consider using some simple awards
that drive the right behaviour. Reward
schemes are sensitive to culture.
So choose something that works for
you and your people.
Just remember that we all like to be
appreciated. Some simple, but visible
rewards for the right behaviours go a
long way in driving the right change.
As you track progress, you eventually
hit a pre-determined point on your
s-curve telling you to remove the
coaches from site. From there let the
teams run the process 100% them-
selves. A good practice is to do a Coach
Release Audit several weeks before-
hand. This really helps to check the
organisation is ready to run the pro-
cess without the coaches.
But whatever you do, don’t stop
tracking progress or performance!
As you get to the end of this phase
your focus must shift to ensure the
change you created is being sustained.
If you see a team slipping back make
an early intervention. You need to get
the sites to stand on their own two
legs. So stimulate them to resolve
issues without the coaches if possible.
And if necessary return the coaches to
site, but only ever for a short period of
time. And only to address specific
gaps.

when you come around to
implement the next set of
improvements.
And most important: develop a
plan to sustain the gains you’ve
made.
19
Phase 5: Close Out
With the new process implemented
you do not just walk away.
You need to ensure that the main-
tenance planning & scheduling process
will stand the test of time. And con-
tinuously improve rather than unravel
when you step back.
There are a few things I encourage you
to do in the Close Out phase:
Celebrate the success. If you’ve
come this far you’ll have achieved
significant change. And you’ll have
made a step change in perfor-
mance. So, be proud of what you’ve
achieved. Even if there’s still a long
way to go. This is so important yet
it is often forgotten. Not cele-
brating success or thanking people
for all their hard work means you
take them for granted. Don’t do
that. Take the time to say thank
you to your people. To say: well
done!
Identify the lessons learned from
the implementation. What went
well? What could you have done
better? Document these lessons
and share them with your Steering
Committee. They will be very useful
Phase 6: Sustain
Making a change is easy, making it
stick is a lot harder. At the end of your
implementation, you need to put in
place practices that will help you
sustain what you’ve implemented.
I can’t repeat this often enough. This is
exactly why during the Close-out phase
you will have built that Sustain Plan.
Now it’s time to execute that plan.
Unfortunately, the Sustain phase never
really stops. But as planning & sche-
duling becomes “the way things are
done around here” the effort required
to sustain and improve it does reduce
over time.

20
Here are the things you need to work
on during the Sustain phase:
Make sure you have a comprehen-
sive set of performance metrics in
place. Review them in regular
meetings. Identify longer term
trends. And take action as
required.
Have clearly defined competence
criteria for critical roles. Make sure
new staff in those roles get the
training and coaching they need to
succeed in those roles.
Have easy to access and easy to
understand documentation in
place. And please, keep it up to
date.
Assign a Process Owner for plan-
ning & scheduling. Hold your
Process Owner accountable for the
outcomes of the process. Conduct
annual process reviews to assess
how well the process is working
and where the next improvements
should take place. Track the com-
pletion of the agreed improve-
ments.
It isn’t hard to get planning & sche-
duling to work for you. It’s all about
common sense. But as is often said
“common sense is not common place”
and that’s where you come in. Make
the change!

Erik is the founder of the Reliability
Academy and has over 25 years of
experience in managing maintenance
& reliability.
During those years, he has worked for
multinational companies in the Energy
sector in the Netherlands, the United
Kingdom, the Philippines, the Sultanate
of Oman, and Australia.
He is passionate about continuous
improvement and keeping things
simple. Through the Reliability
Academy, he helps Maintenance &
Reliability professionals around the
globe – people like yourself – improve
their plant’s reliability and their
organisation’s bottom line.
He is a Certified Maintenance &
Reliability Practitioner (CMRP), Certified
Reliability Leader (CRL), Certified Asset
Management Assessor (CAMA), a
Chartered Professional Engineer
(CPEng), holds an Executive MBA, and a
Master’s Degree in Systems
Engineering.
Website www.reliabilityacademy.com
Linkedin Erik's profile
About the author
21

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