Look-Ahead Scheduling

In my last article I discussed the development of a Long-Range scheduling tool. This tool, if de-veloped with some thought should contain know, routine activities, and identify instances where resources may be constrained (such as vacations, outages, etc.). If you consider the long range plan to function the same as your “Day Planner,” then you are ready to enter the world of look ahead scheduling.

Often when we visit prospective clients we enter into a discussion about work scheduling. Most of the maintenance people we talk to promptly respond that all of their work is scheduled. But what does this really mean? In most cases, this means that all work is put onto the schedule the same day it is scheduled. Their “look ahead” horizon is less than one day! It looks really great on their reports when a high level of “scheduled activities” is reported. However, while living within the letter of the law, they’re missing the intent of scheduling.

Why schedule at all? Well, I can think of many (and probably not all) the reasons for scheduling work. Some of these reasons are:

1. Coordination of activities between maintenance and production

2. Having parts and support available prior to work commencement

3. Combining many tasks to occur at the same time

4. Taking advantage of resources availability

5. Reducing wait time

6. Completing more work per unit of time

You can probably think of many more reasons to schedule as the list goes on. As a maintenance professional, life gets a lot easier when you can schedule your work. If you make production a partner in schedule development you create closer ties and a sense of organizational ownership.

So, how do we go about scheduling? First of all, set your scheduling horizons high. Look-ahead scheduling, as the name implies, requires that you look at least one week into the future. With our clients, we set the horizon at six weeks! To most maintenance personnel that are part of a reactive organization, this window seems completely unrealistic. However, if I can slot (schedule) work six weeks into the future, I help my Planner by identifying his planning priorities. I also give the planner up to six weeks to identify and secure parts, materials, permits, production assistance, and anything else required as part of a work plan.

There are a couple of thing that are required to implement look ahead scheduling. First is a long-range plan, second is a “quality” backlog of work, and lastly an organization that is willing to work together to facility and not department priorities.

We’ll talk about developing a one week look-ahead schedule (tiny baby steps). Starting with the long range schedule, look at the routine activities that are planned for the following weeks. Using the backlog, look for any work that can be associated with those routine activities. Prepare a list of those activities. Distribute this list to the member of the organization that will attend the weekly planning meeting. In most cases, at a minimum, this will be maintenance foremen, the planner and the on-duty shift supervisor (or his counterpart) representing production. Some organization choose to increase this list, but a note of caution, don’t have too many!

At the weekly planning meeting, the planner presents the list for review and discussion. The group concurs on the list (add or delete) and adds any other high priority work that should be accomplished during the next week (remember emergency work is addressed as it occurs). The list is adjusted for resource constraints and committed to by all present. The list is distributed to the appropriate locations, shops, control rooms and plant managers’ office. The planner prepares and distributes the work packages to the appropriate foremen. You do have a planner, don’t you? The only steps remaining are execution and reporting on success.

There are some points one could argue on. For example, do we schedule to 100% or greater of maintenance capacity? Well this depends on the organization. Normally I would say that when you embark on this journey, if your reactive work load is at 25% or higher, you should set your planning/scheduling sights a little lower. In this case I would recommend setting the scheduling load at about 70% of your totals available resource. This will allow you to deal with the reactive load during the work week. This is not to say that you can’t place additional “interruptible” work on the daily schedule to accommodate a daily load of 100%. The key indicator is how you com-ply with the written schedule. As an organization you should be shooting for 100% compliance against the schedule. As you get better with compliance and execution, you can continue to raise the bar until you reach the 95% one week out schedule load.

In the next article, I’ll discuss how the “weekly” schedule translates into the “daily” schedule. This step focuses on work execution and adherence to agreed upon work.

If you have any questions or comments on the article, or any aspects of the Work Management process, please feel free to contact me via e-mail at samidavea@aol.com .