How can I make our weekly maintenance scheduling meetings more productive?

By Tim Kister, CMRP, Life Cycle Engineering

Q: We have a weekly scheduling meeting to establish our maintenance schedule for the following week. This meeting doesn’t seem to be as productive as we feel it should be.  How long should this meeting take and who should attend?

A: There are several factors to consider. First, you need to clearly define the objective of the meeting. This meeting is for final schedule negotiations that consider operation’s ability to grant access to equipment for which maintenance has identified “ready work” and sufficient labor to complete the work. This meeting does not address planning issues.  

Second, the meeting should last one hour or less, based on all parties coming to the meeting fully prepared. This meeting is not to start the scheduling process but to finalize the schedule.  

Third, only those individuals that have specific responsibilities in the scheduling process should attend the meeting. They would include Planner/Schedulers, Maintenance supervision and an Operation’s representative. The Operation’s representative must have knowledge of the production schedule, the authorization to grant equipment/process downtime and the support of Operations management to back his decisions. Typically this position is called an Operations/Maintenance Coordinator (OMC). Any additional attendees are only on an as-needed support role basis.

 

Tim Kister, CMRP, is a well-recognized leader in the field of Planning & Scheduling. A dedicated educator, Tim has facilitated over 100 workshops and seminars focused on maintenance management and planning & scheduling and has co-authored the book, “Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook; Streamlining Your Organization for a Lean Environment.” As Planning & Scheduling Subject Matter Expert for Life Cycle Engineering (LCE), Tim helps clients recognize opportunities for improvement that enable rapid optimization of business processes and long-term sustainability. You can reach Tim at tkister@LCE.com.

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