The Weekly Schedule of Maintenance The first thing to establish about a maintenance schedule is the owner. Who owns the schedule? The answer is we do. The “we” is Operations and Maintenance. Operations has a part: providing access to the equipment, systems, and processes in order for Maintenance to perform the maintaining. Maintenance’s part is to provide the labor, skills, materials, and equipment to perform the maintenance work. Once this element of the weekly schedule is understood and ownership is accepted, the rest of the scheduling is rather straightforward. Scheduler’s Role The scheduler function facilitates the schedule development. The scheduler’s job is to assemble the backlog of Ready-to-Schedule (RTS) work orders and coordinate what work can be performed during the next scheduling cycle. A typical scheduling cycle runs Monday through Sunday, but there are numerous variations to the cycle depending on many factors. Schedule Development The scheduler considers these factors as he develops the schedule: Labor availability for the cycle Number of internal maintenance personnel Skills required for the RTS work orders External labor requirements dictated by the planning process Other support labor needs (Hot Work Watch, Confined Space Entry Teams, etc.) Priorities of the RTS work orders All RTS backlog work orders need to be accomplished but only a certain number can be accomplished. High-priority work orders have been assessed according to the asset criticality, risk associated with the need, and the impact on production. Lower priority work orders are included on the schedule and are assessed by the same elements of criticality, risk and impact. Preventive/Predictive Maintenance Work (PM/PdM) The maintenance computer system should be releasing predetermined work orders for the coming cycle based on the set frequency trigger. The scheduler takes these work orders into consideration when mapping out the work. If possible the scheduler tries […]