Defining the Role of a Maintenance

Planner

Tor Idhammar
Tags: condition monitoring, planning and scheduling

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. In my opinion, it would be a huge mistake to decide
against planning, 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. Therefore, the first step is 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
your 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.” However, I want to
argue that it is critical that a planner says “no” to certain assignments. This is
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.