Maintenance and Reliability
Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
Effective Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
Planning work before it reaches the schedule, so a crew arrives with the parts, the permit and the plan.
- Duration
- 5 days
- Contact hours
- 30
- Level
- Intermediate
- Fee from
- On enquiry
Overview
Most maintenance organisations schedule without planning. Work orders go into a week with a trade and an estimate, and the crew discovers on arrival that the part is not there, the permit is not raised, or the machine cannot be released. Wrench time collapses and the backlog grows, which produces pressure to schedule harder, which makes it worse. Planning is the step in between, and it is a distinct discipline: scoping the job, specifying parts and labour, and only then letting it be scheduled. This week separates the two and builds both.
Who should attend
Maintenance planners and schedulers, maintenance supervisors and superintendents, storekeepers and materials coordinators, and engineers accountable for maintenance performance.
What you will be able to do
- Separate planning from scheduling, and establish what each has to deliver.
- Scope and plan a job so a crew can execute it without stopping.
- Manage a backlog by readiness rather than by age.
- Build a weekly schedule the operation has actually committed to.
- Measure the planning function on something other than orders closed.
How it is taught
Short input, then work, across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each. Exercises run on situations delegates bring rather than on a case study written for a different organisation. Cohorts are capped so that everybody is asked something.
Available as classroom, live online, in house.
Programme outline
Day 1
Planning is not scheduling
- What each step delivers, and why conflating them fails
- Wrench time, and where the hours actually go
- The planner's position in the organisation
- Why scheduling harder makes a planning problem worse
Day 2
The work order
- A request that can be assessed, and screening it
- Scoping on the plant rather than from a desk
- Priority that reflects consequence rather than volume
- History, and making it worth writing
Day 3
Building a job plan
- Task steps, trades and realistic durations
- Parts, kitting and staging before the week starts
- Permits, isolations and the lead time they need
- Tools, access and specialist resource
Day 4
Backlog and schedule
- Ready backlog against total backlog
- Weekly and daily scheduling horizons
- Getting an operational commitment to release the plant
- Break in work, and protecting the schedule from it
Day 5
Measuring and improving
- Schedule compliance, and what it does and does not show
- Estimate accuracy, fed back into planning
- Rework, and the plan that caused it
- Reporting that a production manager will read
What you leave with
- A job plan for one real work order, complete to parts and permits.
- A backlog review process segmented by readiness.
- A weekly scheduling routine with the operational commitment built in.
Dates and fees
| Dates | Location | Format | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 to 27 November 2026 | Nairobi, Kenya | Classroom | US$1,500 |
| 30 November 2026 to 4 December 2026 | Maseru, Lesotho | Classroom | R15,000 |
| 7 to 11 December 2026 | Durban, South Africa | Classroom | R15,000 |
| 14 to 18 December 2026 | Dubai, United Arab Emirates | Classroom | US$1,500 |
Fees are per delegate and cover tuition, all programme materials and the certificate. Travel, accommodation and visas are arranged by the delegate. Registration closes two weeks before a programme starts.
Certificate
A GATI certificate recording what was attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended. Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record.
It records participation. and GATI does not claim one it does not hold.