Thank you for letting me share my passion for maintenance planning and scheduling. Please also join me on YouTube (youtube.com/@palmerplanning), LinkedIn, and my website (www.palmerplanning.com), which also shows my schedule for upcoming public workshops, in addition to past articles and presentations. You can contact me at docpalmer@palmerplanning.com.

1.- How did the idea to write the McGraw-Hill's Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook come about, and what was your goal in creating it?

Interestingly, publisher McGraw-Hill asked me to write the handbook. I had recently earned my MBA and been selected by an Associate Managing Director (vice-president) of the JEA electric utility to join his staff. He soon placed me within an ongoing project to improve powerplant maintenance. My newly acquired business skills including organizational theory (an exciting subject, no doubt!) helped me “adjust” maintenance planning and scheduling leading to a huge pop in work productivity. Soon after in 1995, I wrote a magazine article, A Day in the Life of a Planner. This article showed how I envisioned planners going about their day and led to McGraw-Hill calling me. I really felt honored and welcomed the opportunity to help others because earlier I had been unable to find any handbook or much literature to help me.

2.- Can you highlight some specific challenges that organizations commonly face in implementing effective maintenance planning and scheduling, and how does your handbook address these challenges?

Successful planning and scheduling both involve weird concepts and companies just don’t do weird easily. Success definitely requires management understanding and driving. My handbook focus is on giving the company change agent a “death grip” on the what, why, and how it works and how to get management support.

Most people think planning is about telling craftspersons what to do. But craftspersons resent that approach and these planning programs fail, spectacularly in frustration. Instead, proper planning is about running a Deming cycle of continuous improvement where management clearly explains planners are simply giving head starts that improve over time with craftsperson feedback. In effect, planners should be “craft historians” for the craftspersons who “own” the plan. (In the organizational theory language of Dr. Mintzberg, the proper coordination of maintenance is treating maintenance as a professional bureaucracy with professional craftspersons having the staff function of planning as an aid. It is not a machine bureaucracy with planners set up as a technostructure giving rules to the craftspersons. lol) Properly implemented, the Deming Cycle improves plans over the years leading to superior quality of job execution.

Similarly, most people think scheduling is dictating in advance what everyone will do next week and that the purpose of scheduling is to complete the schedule. These scheduling programs result in failure sometimes manifested as frustration and sometimes as wondering “what are we getting out of it.” Instead, proper scheduling is about defeating Parkinson’s Law to increase productivity, helping us complete more work than we would normally complete. Parkinson’s Law (the amount of work assigned expands to fill the time available) requires that we fully load weekly schedules and accept lower schedule compliance, we should not expect to complete the schedule! With the real-life churn of uncertainty of exact job durations and incidence of new reactive work, we cannot make elaborate daily schedules a week in advance. But we do not need to. Instead, all we need to do is start each crew off with a simple list of work orders matching the craft available hours for the entire week. This full week serves as a “mission” that accelerates craft work order completion. (In the business language of Dr. Drucker, most companies misunderstand the true objective of scheduling.) The true objective is to help us complete more work than we would normally complete. Instead, most companies think the objective of scheduling is to complete the schedule or know what everyone is doing in advance. They underload the schedule to ensure its completion and so fail to defeat Parkinson’s Law and do not get a productivity increase. Many companies also waste an enormous amount of time making advance daily schedules and then totally revising them every day for the rest of the week.)

The Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook explains these concepts and sets forth guiding principles for making them work with examples of planning work orders and creating schedules. A number of chapters and appendices also deal with computers, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, projects, storerooms, audits, and other associated aspects of planning and scheduling. The handbook helpfully provides a number of real company examples of success.

3.- With the evolution of technology, how have digital tools and software impacted the field of maintenance planning and scheduling, and how should professionals adapt to these changes?

CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) and EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) computerization definitely has improved maintenance, including planning and scheduling. Planners can more easily create and reuse living job plans. They can find similar job plans across global platforms as a head start. Predictive maintenance (PdM) analysts have an ever-increasing wealth of technology beyond vibration analysis, infra-red, and ultra sound. With PdM, the trick is that management must drive a culture of encouraging finding, planning, scheduling, and executing work on “smoothly” running equipment. The Engineers can solve more easily problems by researching data bases and similar situations (Where have we ever encountered this failure mode?) Managers can more easily see trends (Are we doing more and more PM or less and less PM?)

William Biekert’s soon-to-be-released book, Beyond the Delusion, speaks perfectly to the absolute need for management to insist that project engineers deliver a matching digital asset whenever they install a physical asset. The plant must have its electronic twin upon completion of commissioning.

A downside of computerization is presuming the computer will tell us how to do maintenance. “As soon as the CMMS is fully implemented, everything will be fine” is two lies. A person that does not know how to add, multiple, subtract, and divide has no business with a hand-held calculator. The computer does not know that maintenance is about keeping things from breaking and not simply about quickly fixing things when they break. The computer will let you do the wrong thing faster. Be cautious that the computer does not distract us from proper strategies.

4.- Could you share a memorable success story where the implementation of robust maintenance planning and scheduling significantly improved the overall performance and reliability of a facility or operation?

Planning and scheduling is (are) not the “silver bullet.” Plants have to implement all of the parts of the maintenance equation. At JEA in the 1990’s, we “fixed” planning and scheduling, the storeroom, PdM, root cause analysis, project ranking, field availability of supervisors, training, and even hand tools. We rose from an electric utility having the worst availability and the highest electric rates to having among the best availability and lowest rates. At another company I helped later, the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati won Uptime magazine’s award for Best Emerging Maintenance Reliability Program in 2013. Cincinnati developed its PdM program and revamped PMs for its needy systems with RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance). Planning and scheduling provided the productivity these programs needed to execute the extra proactive work to improve overall reliability.

5.- Given your extensive experience, what advice would you give to young professionals entering the field of maintenance planning and scheduling, and what skills do you consider crucial for success in this role?

We absolutely need never to stop learning. There are so many companies out there with different parts of knowing what works. Obviously, the skill needed is a thirst to keep learning. We must attend maintenance conferences and meet other professionals to see what everyone is doing. We need to develop personal networks where we can “know who to ask” and ask away. Most people are willing to share.

6.- How do you see the future of maintenance planning and scheduling evolving, and what trends or innovations do you anticipate playing a significant role in the years to come?

I think more and more companies will adopt best planning and scheduling practices, but at the same time, maintenance as a profession seems to have a revolving door, its leaders come and go. Leaders pass through maintenance on their way to overall plant or even corporate roles. I see many fresh faces at the same companies I visit over the years.

I think we’ll see AI (Artificial Intelligence) help us faster figure out issues and job plans, but we must be cautious. AI will give us the consensus of the industry thinking. By definition, the consensus is good practice, but not the best practice of the few companies that are unusually good. AI will give us a quick step up from scratch to competing, but not to a competitive edge. The accuracy of numerical data and references may also be suspect.

7.- In your interactions with professionals and companies globally, have you observed any cultural differences that impact the approach to maintenance planning and scheduling, and how do you recommend addressing these differences for effective implementation?

I’ve been blessed in seeing the common “joy of getting it” regarding proper planning and scheduling around the world across industries and cultures. Humans all benefit from Dr. Deming’s help that we must admit plans are not perfect and Dr. Drucker’s help that the real objective of scheduling is to complete more work, not complete the schedule. Nonetheless, management in all these places also has a reluctance to embrace plans as just head starts and schedules should not lead to high schedule compliance. (Because it’s weird!) But, that’s exactly why proper planning and scheduling is a competitive edge.

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8.- Can you share some feedback or success stories from professionals or organizations that have implemented the strategies and principles outlined in your handbook, highlighting the positive impact on their operations?

Similar to JEA’s and Cincinnati’s success above, I have enjoyed hearing from a number of companies that have had me help out. Here are a few. A Texas water company achieved a 40% pop in work order completion rate going from 7 work orders per person per week to 10. For their 50-person workforce, they got the equivalent of an extra 20 persons for free to do more proactive work. A maintenance manager from an Ohio chemical company told me they had drained their entire backlog two months after I had left. A grain company in Spain went from completing 339 work orders a month from 228. This stuff is really exciting!

9.- Considering the increasing focus on sustainability in industries, how can maintenance planning and scheduling contribute to reducing environmental impact and promoting eco-friendly practices?

Wonderfully, planning and scheduling promotes doing more proactive work which reduces reactive work. We properly grease a bearing in time instead of replacing the bearing, having collateral damage, and losing product. We reduce reactive work which is inherently less safe because we would be rushing. We reduce reactive work which is inherently more against the environment because we would be already, or imminently about to be, exceeding environmental limits or any eco-friendly situations. Proactive maintenance is that boring work on things before things break to keep things from breaking and no one is shouting at anyone or going crazy.

10.- Reflecting on your career, what has been the most fulfilling or rewarding aspect of your work in the field of maintenance planning and scheduling?

I’ve really, really enjoyed traveling and meeting friends that share like interests in maintenance excellence.

11.- Beyond your contributions to the maintenance field, how do you envision your legacy in shaping the education and development of future professionals in this industry?

I’d like to think I’ve helped colleagues learn and grow, just as colleagues before me have helped me.

12.- Given the dynamic nature of industries, how do you stay updated on the latest trends and developments in maintenance planning and scheduling, and how do you recommend professionals maintain continuous learning throughout their careers?

Again, attending conferences helps me stay abreast of new thoughts and ideas. Personally presenting presentations myself (a pain in the neck sometimes time-wise) encourage others to come and greet me. These chats encourage meeting people and developing networks.

13.- Given your successful experience and significant impact on the maintenance professionals' community with McGraw-Hill's Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook, do you have plans to write another book in the near future? If so, could you give us a preview of the topic it might cover?

The handbook initially took FIVE years to write on my own time while working a full-time job. Now, while consulting, I am still pretty busy. I like writing magazine articles and update the handbook every five years for new thoughts and subject areas, but there will not be a sequel or another book. On the other hand, Jason Bolte (an industry colleague I met at a conference!) helped me set up a YouTube channel. I chat each week for a few minutes about planning and scheduling. Please subscribe and join me! YouTube.com@docpalmerplanning

14.- Outside of your professional career, can you share an experience that has had a significant impact on your life and influenced your perspective on the importance of balancing work and personal life?

My father always had time for our family and was even Scoutmaster for a while for my Boy Scout troop. I’ve never thought of work as an end unto itself.

15.- In addition to your outstanding professional career and contributions to the field of maintenance, can you share some of your personal interests or hobbies that passionately engage you outside the work environment?

My interests and time definitely include my wife, daughters, church, golf, gardening, and landscaping (I have a chainsaw and I know how to use it). I wonder how I have time for enjoying talking about planning and scheduling, but I do.

Thank you for letting me be part of your maintenance family and sharing today!