Maintenance Scheduling in Production and Operation Management

Scheduling is the function of coordinating all of the logistical issue around the issues regarding the execution phase of the work. Scheduled of maintenance jobs basically deals with answering two questions—‘Who’ and ‘When’ of job, i.e., “who would do the job” and “when the job would be started and done”.

Effective scheduling essentially needs realistic thinking, based on substantial data and records. Majority of scheduling work needs to occur in areas such as overhead labour hours safety and toolbox meetings, break times and training times etc. Addition of corrective and approved improvement actions as dictated by the prioritization system and operations plan etc.

Requirements for Schedulers

A scheduler should also have knowledge about job, techniques, facilities, analytical ability and judgmental courage. The scheduler must obtain knowledge/information about following ability and judgmental courage. The scheduler must obtain information about following facts, before starting his job:

1. Manpower availability by trade, location, shift, crew arrangement and permissible overtime limit etc.
2. Man hour back log on current or unfinished jobs.
3. Availability of the equipment or area where the work has to be performed.
4. Availability of proper tools, tackles, spares, consumables, structural and other required materials.
5. Availability of external manpower and their capabilities; these may be from other shops/ departments of the plant or from contractors (local, nearby, ancillary etc).
6. Availability of special equipments, jigs/fixtures, special lifting and handling facilities and cranes etc. This should also include labour and time saving devices like pneumatic hammers and excavators etc.
7. Starting date of the job; also often completion time of total job is predetermined and, in that case, resources are to be arranged accordingly.
8. Past schedules and charts (updated) if the same job has been done earlier, etc.

Source: KumarAnil, Suresh N. (2009), Production and operations management, New Age International Pvt Ltd; 2nd Ed. edition.