5 ways effective planning and scheduling can boost your competitive advantage
I was blessed to attend the 2024 RPM Symposium hosted by HECO. I presented on why planning and scheduling is not simply a best practice, but also gives a company a competitive advantage. Proper planning and scheduling takes advantage of hidden opportunities. Because even good companies do not see them, these opportunities offer a competitive edge for you. Become aware, take advantage, and become a best performer.
The world’s foremost quality guru Dr. Deming1 tells us “the big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place.” This declaration rings especially true for planning and scheduling. We find many true aspects of planning and scheduling simply hard to believe: The purpose of planning is actually not to tell people what to do. The purpose of scheduling is not to complete the schedule. Wrench time is only 35%. Management settles staffing for maintenance just to the point where we can keep up with breakdowns. And finally, first line supervisors think their “mission” is to “Take care of operations and otherwise make sure everyone is busy.” Are you aware of these truths?
First of all, planning’s real purpose is to help us improve the quality of field execution. We have skilled craftspersons that have been with us fifteen or twenty years. We want them to exercise their skill and judgment. We do not want anyone ever to blindly follow a job plan. The plan is a “head start” where planners perform a triage of requests and assemble the best plans they can within the time they have to plan all the new work. After job completion, planners do post mortems especially with craft feedback to improve plans for better head starts in the future. Thus, proper planning runs a cycle of continuous improvement over the years to have better guides to help skilled craftspersons. The common notion of telling craftspersons what to do simply leads to frustration both from planners who cannot be perfect and craftspersons who resent being told what to do.
Second, scheduling’s real purpose is to help us complete more work than we would normally complete. Our enemy is Parkinson’s Law2, “the amount of work assigned expands to fill the time available.” We must fully load weekly schedules or else the work we do assign will take longer than it should, and we will not complete as much as we could have completed. (Sounds almost like a tongue twister.)
Yet, most people errantly think the purpose of scheduling is somehow “to complete the schedule.” They underload the weekly schedule to allow for reactive work so they can have great schedule compliance. They have great schedule compliance, but do not complete as much work as they could have completed. They have failed. Consider that a good bowling score would be 200 out of 300, only 67%. And a good batting average would be .300, only 30%! Beware using a school grading system (where 90% is an “A”) for schedule compliance.
Third, “wrench time” is only 35% – everywhere, across industries, continents, and cultures. Statistical studies show craftspersons spend only about a third of their time available actually moving jobs ahead. The average craftsperson only “directly works” 3.5 hours out of a 10-hour shift. They spend the other time getting parts and tools, traveling, in crew meetings and breaks, which is all part of “work” but is not time spent moving jobs ahead. Wrench time is only 35% everywhere because at this point people “feel busy,” a human nature thing. Surprisingly, best practice wrench time is only 55%. But the leverage of increasing wrench time gives a “50% pop” in work order completion rate (55/35 = 1.57).
Fourth, management sets our maintenance staffing level exactly to the point where we have many breakdowns, but we manage to fix them and deliver a profitable (good) company. As we improve to where things are not breaking as much, management does not replace staff attrition. “We have ten electricians and two about to retire. Let’s see if we can get by with only eight electricians.” This staffing strategy continues until we simply cannot keep up enough and operations is screaming. Management then decides to hire a few more electricians. Unfortunately, the best maintenance strategy proactively works on assets before they break so they never break, but we simply do not have the ability to do the extra proactive work to eradicate breakdowns altogether and stay there.
Finally, first line supervisors naturally think their “mission” is to “take care of operations and otherwise make sure everyone is busy.” This mission keeps us busy fixing breakdowns and supports being a good company, but we are only at 35% wrench time.
You can leverage all of these hidden opportunities. Run planning as a Deming Cycle to make plans more helpful over time and fully load schedules to defeat Parkinson’s Law. Best planning runs a Deming Cycle to give head starts and improve plans over time, especially with craft feedback. Best scheduling fully loads schedules and accepts 40-90% schedule compliance which defeats Parkinson’s Law. These schedules change the first line supervisor mission to “try to complete a certain amount of work, but break the schedule to take care of Operations.”
The old sense of mission gives 35% wrench time whereas this new sense of mission gives 55% wrench time. You get a 50% pop in work order completion rate. You go from completing, say, 1,000 to 1,500 work orders per month. And because you have staffed to do the reactive work, “by definition” all the extra work is proactive! You improve the quality of field execution and complete more proactive work to eradicate reactive work. Success.
Because your competitors are not aware of these hidden opportunities, you can gain a competitive edge by leveraging them. “The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place.” Thanks Dr. Deming. Don’t settle for good. Be great!
(1) Deming, Dr. W. Edwards. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/w_edwards_deming.html. Accessed 14 June, 2015.
(2) Parkinson, Cyril (November 19th, 1955), Parkinson’s Law, The Economist as reported in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law. Accessed 10 Oct, 2013.
