How To Implement Maintenance Planning & Scheduling

How to implement
maintenance planning
& scheduling
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.
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
organisation. 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 stakeholders, you will

fail too.
How to implement maintenance planning & scheduling
You will get stuck due to resistance.
Stakeholders 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 management approach is essential to success.

But, even in small organisations 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.
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 leadership 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.
Page 2 of 18 www.roadtoreliability.com
• 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 responsibilities. 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.
The importance of ‘hard’ change management

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. 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 successfully
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.
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.
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
communicate 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 organisation 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 a clear
case for change. That you have identified and engaged all key stakeholders. And
that you have an initial communications plan is 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 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 is 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 managers. 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 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 management 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
(future) 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 analysing your current situation. About identifying
the problems you currently face in the execution of your maintenance. 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.
There is a structured process called “AS IS – TO BE” that I like to use for this.
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 understand 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?
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.
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 supporting 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 maintenance 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 understanding. 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 minimizes ‘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 everybody 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 summarizes 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 differentiation 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.
Do you have the right work order status codes in place?
Can you generate the right reports or metrics?
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.
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 milestones 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.
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 organisation’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.
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 implementation 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% themselves. A good practice is to do a Coach Release Audit several
weeks beforehand. This really helps to check the organisation is ready to run the
process 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.
Phase 5: Close Out

With the new process implemented you do not just walk away.
You need to ensure that the maintenance planning & scheduling process will
stand the test of time. And continuously 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 performance.
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 celebrating 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 when you
come around to implement the next set of improvements.
• And most important: develop a plan to sustain the gains you’ve made.
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 &
Scheduling becomes “the way things are done around here” the effort required
to sustain and improve it does reduce over time.
Here are the things you need to work on during the Sustain phase:
• Make sure you have a comprehensive 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 Planning & 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 completion of the agreed
improvements.
It isn’t hard to get Planning & Scheduling 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!
About the author
Erik Hupjé is the founder of the Road to Reliability™ and has over two decades of experience in
the areas of maintenance, reliability, and asset management. Erik has a passion for continuous
improvement and keeping things simple. Through the Road to Reliability™, he helps
Maintenance & Reliability professionals around the globe improve their plant’s reliability and
their organisation’s bottom line.
Erik worked and lived in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and the Sultanate
of Oman for multinationals like Shell and ConocoPhillips. He is now based in Brisbane, Australia
where he lives with his wife Olga and their three children. Personal interests include traveling,
cooking, history, and beach fishing.

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How to implement

Most organisations that implement maintenance planning and scheduling do not

A structured approach to implementing maintenance planning

And it’s such a waste of your efforts.

Without a structured project management approach, your implementation of

And without a focus on change management or engaging stakeholders, you will

You will get stuck due to resistance.

In big organisations, a project management approach is essential to success.

Remember, you want lasting change, not another initiative.

The 6 steps to implement maintenance planning and

The importance of ‘hard’ change management

There are two problems with these soft issues.

Trying to identify soft issues upfront or during an implementation is tough. And

The four ‘hard’ factors in the ‘DICE’ framework are:

• Duration of the change program. Or if it’s a long-term change, the

So when it comes to implementing change, whether it’s planning & scheduling or

And deal with ‘soft’ issues as follows:

Develop a clear and succinct Project Charter outlining:

• What is you are trying to achieve?

I strongly recommend forming a small Steering Committee consisting of your

We’ve seen people avoid stakeholder mapping early in their implementation

Since you’ll be taking a project management approach you’ll need to develop

Or do you need to engage external coaches for a period of time?

You typically do this in a facilitated workshop environment. Get a group together

• How does work get initiated?

Things to consider are:

• Is your CMMS setup to do everything you now need?

And in terms of data:

Using the output of your AS IS – TO BE workshop develop a high-level

With the process documentation complete it is time to develop the training

Irrespective of how you structure your training develops a simple competency

You see, a supervisor requires a different level of understanding of planning &

Do you have the right work order status codes in place?

Can you generate the right reports or metrics?

You see, most organisations focus on indicators like Schedule Compliance or

A simple, easy, and effective change measure is something called Meeting

• The right people attending;

• Weekly schedule review meeting

• 90% of staff trained after 1 month

A good practice is to hold a visible, well-communicated kick-off session. Make

• The case for change

As you go through your implementation track progress on a weekly basis with

But whatever you do, don’t stop tracking progress or performance!

stimulate them to resolve issues without the coaches if possible. And if

Phase 5: Close Out

Now it’s time to execute that plan.

• Make sure you have a comprehensive set of performance metrics in place.

About the author

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