The Importance of Maintenance Scheduling: How To Make a Maintenance Schedule To Keep Your Systems Running Smoothly

A well-structured maintenance schedule is the backbone of your operations. 

Whether you're managing a fleet of vehicles, a manufacturing facility, or even a small office, a clear and reliable maintenance plan can make a night or day difference when it comes to the health and efficiency of your facility and its assets.

Let’s delve into the ins and outs of maintenance scheduling and discuss how you can bolster your maintenance schedule with one powerful tool. 

What Is Maintenance Scheduling?

Scheduled maintenance is any repair and upkeep work performed within a set timeframe. It details when and by whom given maintenance tasks are performed. Scheduled maintenance may occur at repeating intervals or in response to a work request, such as changing an air filter every March and September or conducting a performance inspection at the start of each year. 

Maintenance may also be scheduled to fulfill a work order. Once a problem is discovered, a maintenance scheduler works with a maintenance planner to resolve it. A time is then scheduled to conduct necessary repairs.

In addition to managing the time at which maintenance tasks should occur, scheduled maintenance also deals with who performs those tasks. The time it takes for the job to be completed is compared with available work hours, which are factored into the schedule. The key here is to make sure those who should perform a given task are available to do so. Without coordinating a set time with maintenance workers and contractors, there is no guarantee that necessary work will be completed on time. This inevitably damages schedule compliance.

Scheduled Maintenance vs. Planned Maintenance

Scheduled maintenance is often lumped together with planned maintenance, but the two are actually separate endeavors. Planned maintenance deals with the processes and materials required to successfully complete needed work, whereas scheduled maintenance handles who performs the work and when.

The two work together, and they rely on one another to ensure that maintenance tasks are completed efficiently.

UpKeep allows facilities and maintenance managers to control asset maintenance and reliability with an easy-to-use, mobile-first CMMS software. It ensures that your schedule and planned maintenance work together smoothly and efficiently. 

With our comprehensive maintenance management software, you can empower your maintenance practices and:

• Reduce maintenance response time.
• Streamline communication with unlimited free requesters.
• Decrease equipment and asset downtime by up to 26%.
• Ensure consistent cost records.
• Extend your asset and equipment lifetime by up to 11%.
• Achieve up to 652% ROI by integrating UpKeep into your workflow.

 

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Benefits of Having a Maintenance Schedule

The primary goals of scheduled maintenance are to reduce:

• Reactive maintenance
• Equipment failure
• Maintenance backlogs

Having an airtight maintenance schedule can lead to a host of other benefits, including:

Decreased Downtime and Improved Equipment Reliability

One goal of scheduled maintenance is to ensure that time is used as efficiently as possible. It takes planned maintenance and determines when it should be conducted based on priority, available personnel, the systems that require maintenance, and system locations. If multiple tasks are needed for a single piece of equipment, those are scheduled together.

Scheduled maintenance tasks, such as routine inspections, help detect minor problems before they develop into system failures. By adhering to a regular, well-designed maintenance schedule, maintenance technicians can detect problems early. This prevents lengthy, unscheduled downtime and allows repair work to be conducted optimally. If these downtimes ever do occur, they are corrected without unnecessary delays.

In short, when repairs are necessary, careful maintenance scheduling makes sure they occur at a time that causes minimal disruption to the company’s operations and avoids costly downtime. 

Research suggests that for larger organizations, it may cost companies $9,000 per minute. Scheduled maintenance is a serious bulwark against the threat of downtime-causing breakdowns. 

According to Deloitte, a global professional services organization, companies that adopt scheduled maintenance practices may reduce breakdowns by 70% and associated downtime costs by 25%.

Reduced Maintenance Costs

A maintenance schedule will prevent costly downtime and ensure your equipment is healthy and running properly. It also lowers maintenance costs as time is utilized efficiently and costly problems are prevented.

Maintenance costs are estimated to be between 15% and 40% of overall production costs. But the cost of keeping your maintenance program running isn’t always what makes this percentage so high. 

Research suggests that running equipment until the point of failure could cost ten times more than a regular maintenance program. Lowballing your maintenance budget could lead to more significant maintenance costs in the long run.

An efficacious maintenance schedule will ensure that your maintenance practices save money, not drain your coffers and gut your overhead. 

UpKeep makes it easy for you to track how much time is being spent on maintenance practices while also gaining insight into which machines are your priorities. With our data-capturing abilities, you can zero in on your most important maintenance practices, so if you have to scale back, you’re not depriving your most important assets of valuable preventive and predictive maintenance time. 

Enhanced Safety

Just like your equipment and machinery, your workforce is a valuable resource that must be protected. Therefore, safety should be the top priority for your facility or company. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 2.3 million workers encounter workplace accidents every year. One in every three of these incidents is caused by direct contact with equipment, machines, and objects. 

When was the last time you had your equipment inspected, backed up, or serviced so that hazardous, worn-out parts could be replaced? If you're unsure, it's time to develop a schedule that helps you keep on top of maintenance tasks and fosters a culture that prioritizes workplace safety.  

Extended Asset Lifespan

Taking care of things early on prevents bigger problems down the road, which is true for your valuable assets. Scheduling maintenance ensures you stay on top of your equipment and keep it performing at its best for years to come.

Equipment costs have significantly increased in recent years (by roughly 19% since 2020, according to industry researchers), so businesses are eager to maximize their investment. A well-planned maintenance schedule helps prolong the life of your equipment by enabling prompt repairs whenever an issue arises. This means no more wasted energy or high utility costs, as your equipment will consume only the energy it needs.

What Is an Example of Maintenance Scheduling?

Most facilities have a heating, cooling, and ventilation (HVAC) system running throughout their buildings. This system requires regular inspections and tune-ups in order to keep running at optimum efficiency. Much of the work is fairly simple, such as keeping registers clean and replacing air filters regularly.

Scheduled maintenance ensures those tasks are handled at specific times. When creating the schedule, the maintenance planner or a designated scheduler determines when their technicians are available. If they are using the services of a third-party HVAC specialist, the specialist’s availability is also taken into account.

Additional work orders may complicate scheduling. For instance, if a piece of equipment near the facility’s heating system needs repairs, that work should be scheduled either before or after the HVAC inspection, depending on priority. If the two tasks are scheduled for the same block of time, one could impede the other, resulting in wasted hours and delayed maintenance work.

Scheduled maintenance may prevent future HVAC breakdowns in many ways. Suppose the assigned personnel discover a faulty blower fan while performing the HVAC inspection. A work order is created, and the repairs are then scheduled for a time in the near future before the issue causes further damage to the unit.

How Do I Create a Maintenance Schedule?

Maintenance scheduling is most impactful when it is one of the many compounding components of a larger maintenance plan. Regardless of the scale of your organization, maintenance departments can always gain from thoroughly assessing their business’s needs and precisely selecting the appropriate maintenance actions to help achieve its objectives.

Once you have a general idea of your facility’s needs and a general plan in place, your next set of moves should include: 

• Identifying a scheduling platform: Maintenance schedules must be documented on a platform, allowing all technicians and key stakeholders access. This will ensure that everyone involved knows all maintenance activities and responsibilities. Many organizations use software such as UpKeep’s CMMS for coordination, work order scheduling, task prioritization, etc.
• Scheduling maintenance activities: Maintenance tasks should be scheduled using production schedules and resource availability to reduce downtime and disruptions as much as possible. 
• Ensuring proper documentation: Many scheduling platforms and software systems will also be capable of streamlining and recording maintenance work using checklists and other resources. Strong documentation is crucial not only for compliance and risk management but also for organizing and efficiently executing future maintenance tasks.
• Setting follow-up triggers: Use your scheduling platform’s features to initiate follow-up or recurring maintenance tasks. This will help guarantee that the necessary maintenance is carried out and establish accountability within the maintenance team.
• Monitoring and adjusting: As with any strategic initiative, tracking schedule adherence and other metrics is essential to assess its effectiveness. Suppose planned work isn’t yielding results or creating other maintenance operations challenges. In that case, it is vital to have a system in place to monitor progress and implement adjustments that need to be made.

Creating a maintenance schedule is integral to maintaining best maintenance practices, reducing downtime and maintenance costs, and cultivating a healthy workplace culture that prioritizes getting things done. With so many moving parts, keeping track of it all can be hard if you’re still using analog methods to send out work orders and facilitate your maintenance efforts. 

UpKeep is an all-in-one maintenance software that covers everything from preventive maintenance scheduling and work order handling to asset management, analytics, and reporting. Take advantage of our intuitive system and empower your facility’s maintenance practices today. 

Empower Your Maintenance Scheduling Capabilities With the Help of UpKeep 

The improved work culture, high-cost savings on asset maintenance, and increased workplace safety all speak for the efficacy of scheduled maintenance — at least when handled properly. Scheduled maintenance is facilitated by the use of CMMS software and careful coordination with maintenance planning, both of which are well worth the investments of time and resources.

However, your maintenance schedule under the facilitation of a CMMS will only be as good as the software itself.

As the first of its kind, UpKeep’s advanced platform is the future of CMMS and EAM software that allows users to:

• Manage multi-location, day-to-day maintenance life cycle
• Optimize asset utilization
• Gain insights into real-time performance data
• Employ an ecosystem approach
• Bridge the gaps between maintenance, reliability, and operations
• And more

Learn more about UpKeep’s next-generation maintenance technology or schedule a demo today. 

 

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