Maintenance planning is the backbone of efficient asset management. It ensures equipment runs smoothly, minimizes downtime, and extends the lifespan of critical assets. Yet, many organizations struggle with poor or ad hoc maintenance planning, leading to costly breakdowns, safety incidents, and many wasted resources.
Introducing some structure to your maintenance planning process can help you avoid most of those problems.
With that in mind, this guide will show you how to use industry best practices to build an efficient planning workflow — and ensure your plans deliver results.
What is maintenance planning?
Maintenance planning is the process of outlining and organizing maintenance tasks to ensure that equipment and assets are kept in optimal condition. It involves identifying maintenance needs, defining the scope of work, and estimating required resources.
Smaller maintenance teams will often have maintenance planning and maintenance scheduling combined in a single role, in which case that person will also be responsible for scheduling and assigning maintenance work.
The value of proper maintenance planning shouldn’t be underestimated. It leads to:
- Reduced downtime: Properly planned maintenance minimizes unexpected equipment failures and operational disruptions.
- Cost savings: Efficient resource allocation and timely interventions reduce unnecessary expenses like emergency repairs and overtime labor.
- Improved safety: Regular upkeep reduces risks associated with equipment malfunctions, ensuring a safer working environment.
- Extended asset lifespan: Proactive care ensures machinery runs efficiently for longer, delaying costly replacements.
- Better resource management: Detailed planning prevents overuse or underuse of personnel and materials, promoting balanced workloads.
To excel as a maintenance planner, there are three key skills to master. First, technical knowledge is crucial, as planners must understand equipment, systems, and maintenance techniques to create effective plans. Second, strong organizational skills are vital for managing multiple tasks, deadlines, and resources efficiently. Lastly, excellent communication skills ensure effective collaboration with technicians, managers, and other stakeholders — guaranteeing that maintenance plans are well-understood and successfully executed.
Steps of the maintenance planning process
By following a systematic approach, planners can allocate resources effectively, ensure timely task execution, and keep maintenance activities aligned with organizational goals.
Let’s break down the essential steps to help you optimize your maintenance planning process.
Step #1: Identify maintenance needs
The first step in maintenance planning is identifying what needs attention. This involves evaluating your equipment, systems, and operational requirements to pinpoint potential areas of concern.
Maintenance planners should rely on data from equipment manuals, historical maintenance records, information about current operating conditions, and input from technicians to understand common failure points and maintenance intervals.
To streamline this process, perform regular inspections and audits to assess asset health and operating conditions. If you have the budget for it, leverage tools like condition monitoring sensors or IoT devices to detect early warning signs of wear or malfunction. Engaging with operators and maintenance teams can also reveal on-the-ground insights about recurring issues or areas that require immediate attention.
The goal at this stage is to gather enough information to understand what needs to be done and which tasks to prioritize.
Step #2: Define the scope of work
The next step is to define the scope of work for each task. This involves detailing what needs to be done and outlining any specific requirements or constraints (i.e. can the work be done while the asset is running or do we need to shut it down first).
Start by breaking down each task into manageable steps. Roughly define details such as tools and equipment needed, required spare parts, and any safety protocols to follow. Specify whether the task is corrective or preventive to ensure the right approach is taken.
If needed, talk to technicians and other maintenance personnel to validate your plan and identify potential obstacles. A well-defined scope of work not only eliminates ambiguity but also ensures that technicians will have everything they need to perform tasks efficiently and safely.
Step #3: Develop a maintenance plan
The maintenance plan serves as a blueprint, outlining how and when maintenance tasks should be carried out to achieve optimal results.
Start by organizing tasks into categories based on priority, frequency, and type (e.g., preventive or corrective maintenance). For recurring tasks, create schedules that align with manufacturer recommendations, equipment usage, or seasonal needs. Ensure the plan accounts for potential conflicts, such as equipment availability or overlapping activities, to avoid disruptions.
Again, try to incorporate feedback from technicians and other stakeholders to address practical concerns and improve the plan’s effectiveness. Ideally, you would have access to maintenance management software to centralize information and track progress.
Step #4: Estimate resources and costs
Once the maintenance plan is developed, the next step is to estimate the resources and costs needed to execute it effectively. This includes labor, materials, tools, and any external services required for the tasks:
- Start by identifying the number of personnel and their specific skill sets needed for each job.
- Next, create a detailed list of required spare parts, consumables, and specialized tools.
- Then, check inventory levels to ensure availability or plan for procurement to avoid delays.
For cost estimation, calculate labor hours, material expenses, and any potential overheads (like equipment rentals or subcontractor fees). Use historical data from previous tasks to refine your estimates and account for potential contingencies. Many organizations find it helpful to use a CMMS or EAM to track costs and resources accurately.
Step #5: Schedule, assign, and track work progress
At this stage, maintenance schedulers often take the lead, working closely with planners to ensure tasks are executed efficiently.Begin by creating a realistic schedule that accounts for task priorities, resource availability, and operational constraints. Use maintenance scheduler software like Sockeye to automate parts of the scheduling process and organize the schedule visually. This will help you avoid bottlenecks and overlaps with production schedules. Try to assign work to technicians based on their skills, availability, and proximity to job sites.
An example of a weekly maintenance schedule built inside Sockeye.
Lastly, encourage technicians to report progress promptly and document any deviations from the plan. This helps planners and schedulers adjust schedules dynamically and keep everything on track.
Best practices for planning maintenance work
Even the most detailed maintenance plan will fall short without effective execution. Below, we discuss best practices that ensure proper follow-through.
Utilize technology
Aside from questionably effective spreadsheets, CMMS solutions are the most common way to streamline and automate maintenance planning and scheduling.
Unfortunately, many organizations find scheduling work through their CMMS/EAM too complex or tedious. If you’re in the same boat, Sockeye can easily integrate with your existing systems and simplify scheduling for you and your team.
For organizations with more advanced needs and larger budgets, integrating predictive analytics and IoT devices can take maintenance planning to the next level. These tools collect real-time data from equipment, enabling planners to detect potential issues before they escalate — and schedule maintenance based on actual asset conditions rather than fixed intervals.
Standardize workflows
Documenting processes and procedures is the only way to ensure that tasks are performed correctly and efficiently (almost) every time.
Here are a couple of ways to standardize workflows:
- Use templates for work orders and job plans: Pre-defined templates help streamline task documentation and ensure all critical details — like tools, materials, and safety protocols — are consistently captured.
- Develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): SOPs provide step-by-step guidance for the maintenance planning process, ensuring all planners use the same approach.
Be it a maintenance planner, scheduler, or technician, standardizing workflows reduces variability. Having less variability creates a more reliable and scalable maintenance planning process.
Optimize time management
There are many ways in which maintenance planners can save time for themselves and their team. Here are two major ones:
- Batch similar tasks: Grouping tasks that require the same tools, skills, or are located in the same area reduces setup times and minimizes unnecessary travel between job sites. For example, scheduling all lubrication tasks in a single area during one visit could save valuable technician time.
- Analyze time logs: Regularly review technician time logs to identify bottlenecks or tasks that consistently take longer than planned. Use this data to uncover inefficiencies, streamline processes, and create more realistic time estimates for future tasks.
Improve work order accuracy
Accurate work orders are the backbone of successful maintenance execution. They provide technicians with the information they need to perform tasks efficiently, reduce errors, and minimize rework. By focusing on work order clarity and detail, you can significantly enhance task outcomes.
- Provide visual aids: Attach annotated images, diagrams, troubleshooting charts, or even videos to work orders to help technicians understand complex tasks. For example, including a schematic of a machine part can speed up troubleshooting and repairs.
- Include failure codes in work orders: Standardizing asset failure codes ensures that issues are categorized accurately, making it easier to analyze data and improve future maintenance planning.
- Write clear instructions: Avoid vague descriptions like “fix the machine.” Instead, specify what needs to be done, which tools to use, and any safety protocols to follow. Example: “Replace the motor coupling using a torque wrench. Follow the provided torque specifications and wear safety gloves.”
Focus on proactive maintenance
We have yet to meet a maintenance planner who loves to constantly update their plans because another critical asset had an unexpected breakdown. Preventive maintenance, while not perfect, can significantly reduce the volume of unplanned work.
If you want to take things a step further, tools like vibration monitoring, thermal imaging, and oil analysis provide real-time insights into equipment health — making the planner’s job significantly easier.
In either case, we still recommend regularly reviewing PM schedules, compliance rates, outcomes, and other KPIs to identify gaps or areas for improvement. Here is the full list of KPIs Sockeye helps you track out of the box.
Regularly check the health of your maintenance plans
In the last section, we mentioned the importance of tracking different KPIs. Well, some of those KPIs can be used to evaluate the health and efficiency of your maintenance plans.
For example:
- Poor Schedule Work Order Compliance and Planned Maintenance Compliance might indicate scheduling conflicts, parts not being available, or inaccurate estimates on how long it takes to complete specific work.
- An increasing or highly varying MTTR (mean time to repair) for recurring tasks could signal a need for better technician training or clearer work orders.
- A low FTFR — when technicians fail to complete repairs on the first attempt — could indicate unclear work orders, inadequate technician training, or missing spare parts.
- An increasing maintenance backlog often signals inefficiencies in resource allocation, poor task prioritization, or lack of personnel.
In many cases, poor performance metrics will have multiple different causes. Dig deeper into your maintenance records to identify root issues before implementing major changes.
Push your team to use reliability methods to reduce recurring failures
Recurring equipment failures can create a significant backlog. They throw a wrench into your maintenance planning process, complicating prioritization and scheduling.
As a maintenance planner, you are in a prime position to catch recurring issues and problematic machines. When that happens talk to maintenance and reliability managers to identify and address the underlying causes.
This is going to make life easier for the whole maintenance team.
Simplify maintenance planning and scheduling with Sockeye
Managing maintenance planning and scheduling can be challenging, especially when using complex systems like CMMS or SAP. These tools often provide valuable data but lack the flexibility and user-friendly features needed for seamless scheduling.
Sockeye simplifies these challenges by integrating directly with your existing tools to enhance their functionality.
With Sockeye, you can automate task scheduling, optimize resource allocation, and gain real-time visibility into your maintenance activities. Its intuitive interface and features make it easier to prioritize work, minimize downtime, and ensure tasks are completed on time.
Interested in learning more? Book a demo to see how Sockeye can simplify your maintenance planning and scheduling processes.
