Richard Palmer and Associates has produced the award-winning Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook (MPSH) Scheduler to speed creation of a weekly schedule using the methodology of the handbook. The spreadsheet allows you to compile the best schedule for each crew’s labor hours in a matter of minutes.
The MPSH Scheduler is simply an “app” for your company’s CMMS. Although the scheduling process outlined in Chapter 6 can be easily executed with paper forms, the MPSH Scheduler is simply an Excel spreadsheet with some macros to manipulate the work orders.
Instead of spending three or four hours manually scheduling at the end of the week, the spreadsheet allows you to compile the best schedule for each crew’s labor hours in a matter of minutes. You can then print out the schedule for each crew or send them an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet even prepares a SQL of the schedule you could use to select out the work orders in the CMMS itself.
Not Software
The MPSH Scheduler is not software per se. It is a simple spreadsheet with macros. It is not a maintenance software package that reaches into the CMMS dataset. Instead you must first export the CMMS work order data to a target spreadsheet in predefined columns that MPSH Scheduler accesses. With a few clicks, the spreadsheet macro brings over and manipulates work orders to put them in the best order for the benefit of the plant considering both priorities of work orders and convenience of maintenance. The spreadsheet then calculates the best schedule with the labor forecasted for the crew being scheduled. This calculation even considers your labor agreements as to working crafts outside their levels or primary crafts. You can review the schedule and make additional groupings as well as mandate certain work be included or excluded. All of this scheduling is along the lines of Chapter 6 in the handbook.
System Requirements
System Requirements: Excel 2003 through 2010 (full install with macros enabled), Windows XP through 2007, 32 or 64 bit operating system. You should have some familiarity with basic Excel navigation moving between tabs and data entry. You (or your IT resource or someone) must be able to download (export) CMMS data into specified columns to create a target backlog spreadsheet in Excel.
Using Excel along with a CMMS
Most CMMSs do not take into account either the uncertain nature of maintenance time estimates or the high incidence of new reactive work that cannot wait until next week. These CMMS programs are programmed for some theoretical “World Class Maintenance” and therefore presume overly accurate job estimates and minimal interrupting new reactive work. This thought process carries into a misguided CMMS approach of creating daily hour-by-hour schedules doing job assignment for individually named craftspersons a week in advance or further.
In real life maintenance, enough jobs finish early or late and enough new urgent work interrupts scheduled work so that daily schedules assigning work must be created every day for the next day and coordinated.
In addition, just because you have three welders doesn’t mean that the best work for the plant would be to use them as welders. Perhaps you might need to use one as a mechanic or as a helper on an electrical task if your labor agreements allow.
Think about it: Someone might say “Don’t you want your maintenance to be ‘World Class’? If so, then why would you accept maintenance jobs running contrary to their estimates or allowing reactive work? Why wouldn’t you use your welder as a welder?” This is a dangerous thought process and leads to unrealistic scheduling practices.
In scheduling, it is better to be realistic and productive, than non-realistic and frustrated. Remember, our goal is not to create a perfect schedule. Our goal is to complete more maintenance work. A weekly schedule should help us accomplish more work rather than be an “end unto itself.” The objective is not to complete the schedule, but to get more work done.
Many companies use Excel extensively for various tasks even though they have a CMMS, for two reasons. One is that a single CMMS cannot be all things to all companies. Maintenance is a competitive edge and a core competency for many companies. The assets they own and how they maintain them are unique. The unique assets these companies utilize create profitable products and their maintenance is an investment in keeping the assets functioning.
This is not to say that there are not some underlying principles to successful maintenance, but that there is not a single “correct” way to execute maintenance. Although the CMMS is configurable to some extent, each company is unique beyond these allowed configurations at times requiring either “customization” or some other solution such as Excel.
The second reason to use an Excel solution beyond the capability of a CMMS is that many times the leadership at a CMMS provider or company IT department is largely “computer driven” instead of “maintenance driven.” As a result, the CMMS was established with more appreciation of what a computer could do than what maintenance needs done.
This is no reflection on an inadequacy of the CMMS implementation leadership, but on maintenance itself. Maintenance is one of the last frontiers to become “professional” in having standards. CPA’s and Accounting degrees; and PE’s and engineering degrees have existed for a long time, there are few maintenance curricula and almost no degrees in universities. The SMRP (Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals) was only established in 1993 and created a certification a few years later. The CMRP (Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional) certification still does not set a standard for each aspect of maintenance, but recognizes those maintenance persons who have demonstrated an ability to look beyond the traditional thinking of “Maintenance fixes things that break” to the modern “Maintenance keeps things from breaking.”
This is simple to say, but difficult to implement in practice. It is easy to see what broke and reward those persons that fixed it. It is difficult to know what to work on before anything breaks and how to reward such action. Thus, many companies use Excel to supplement their CMMS to provide a computer capability for their unique maintenance practices.
- Winner of Innovator of Month July 2011 Maintenance Technology Magazine
- MPSH Scheduler Screenshots