After the latest round of speaking engagements, conferences, and workshops where I have had the opportunity to poll the audience, I’m more 
sure than ever that we are leaving huge opportunities untapped in manufacturing. It is time for planners to plan and schedules to be executed. Planning helps a facility from multiple angles. If you need more uptime then planning gets the required work done faster. If you need safety improvement then planned work has been shown by Ron Moore and others to be safer for those executing the work. If you need lower maintenance cost then planning reduces errors and lowers required labor and materials cost. If you believe what I have said then why does less than 6 percent of maintenance organizations ”really plan” and then execute the work? These numbers are based on recent polling at conferences and events and they were asked based on planners that break the job down into steps and provide the details required to estimate duration and get consistent execution by the maintenance workforce. I think it is a bit like going to the gym, we know it’s good for us but few of us go. What’s it worth? One power generation facility planned and scheduled their annual outage and reduced total outage time by four days while accomplishing more maintenance activities and experiencing no safety incidence. Imagine what four more days of power generation is worth during the peak season. It is time to commit, train your planners, set expectations and attack. When we set up good job plans and then schedule them to the hour then stress levels are reduced and everyone could use less stress, right?
sure than ever that we are leaving huge opportunities untapped in manufacturing. It is time for planners to plan and schedules to be executed. Planning helps a facility from multiple angles. If you need more uptime then planning gets the required work done faster. If you need safety improvement then planned work has been shown by Ron Moore and others to be safer for those executing the work. If you need lower maintenance cost then planning reduces errors and lowers required labor and materials cost. If you believe what I have said then why does less than 6 percent of maintenance organizations ”really plan” and then execute the work? These numbers are based on recent polling at conferences and events and they were asked based on planners that break the job down into steps and provide the details required to estimate duration and get consistent execution by the maintenance workforce. I think it is a bit like going to the gym, we know it’s good for us but few of us go. What’s it worth? One power generation facility planned and scheduled their annual outage and reduced total outage time by four days while accomplishing more maintenance activities and experiencing no safety incidence. Imagine what four more days of power generation is worth during the peak season. It is time to commit, train your planners, set expectations and attack. When we set up good job plans and then schedule them to the hour then stress levels are reduced and everyone could use less stress, right?
