Building a maintenance plan

The twelve-step builder — scope, triggers, tasks, requirements, safety, scheduling and activation.

The builder walks you through twelve steps. The plan exists from the end of step one, so you can leave and come back without losing anything.

A plan generates nothing until you activate it at step twelve. Half-built is inert, not dangerous.

Start from Work → Plans → New.

1. Basic information

   Name the plan, give it a number, say what it is for. Choose the work order type that rounds will be raised as — normally a preventive type — and the priority, which carries the service level.

   Saving this step creates the plan as a draft.

2. Asset scope

   Which machines the plan covers. Either name assets individually, or describe them — every asset of a given type, category or criticality, at a site or below a point in the location tree.

   A described scope keeps working as the plant changes: commission another pump of that type and it comes into scope without anyone remembering to add it.

3. Trigger

   When a round comes due. A plan may carry several triggers, combined with ANY (whichever comes first) or ALL (only when every one is met).

   Trigger	Fires on
   Calendar	An interval — every 30 days, every quarter
   Meter or runtime	A meter passing a threshold — every 2,000 run hours
   Event	Something happening — a breakdown, a commissioning
   Condition	A monitored measurement crossing a limit — vibration, temperature

   ANY is the common choice: every 90 days or every 2,000 run hours, whichever comes first.

   Set the tolerance here too — the window either side of the due date within which the round still counts as compliant.

4. Tasks

   The checklist the technician works through. Steps in order; mark which are mandatory and which require evidence — a photograph, a signature, a measurement.

   Mandatory steps must be complete before the job can be closed, on the handset as well as here.

5. Parts

   Parts every round consumes — a filter, a seal kit, five litres of oil. These become requirements on each work order raised, which is what lets the readiness check warn you before somebody is sent, and what lets reorder forecast planned demand.

6. Tools

   Instruments the round needs. A tool that is out, unusable or out of calibration will show as a shortage on readiness.

7. Skills

   What the person doing this must be able to do, and any certification they must hold. Routing and dispatch both use this; an expired certification stops an assignment.

8. Vendors

   Where the round is done by a contractor rather than in-house. Name the vendor, or the service category, and the entitlement check will look for a contract that covers it.

9. Safety and permit

   Hazards, isolation requirements, and whether a permit to work is required before the job may start. A permit requirement appears on readiness like any other.

10. Scheduling

    How long a round takes — the estimate the capacity plan weighs — how far ahead work orders should be raised, and whether rounds may be grouped so two plans falling in the same week become one visit.

11. Preview

    The occurrences this plan would raise over the coming period, on which assets, on which dates. Read it before activating — this is where a trigger that fires daily instead of monthly becomes obvious.

12. Activate

    Turn it on. From here the plan raises occurrences, and they appear on Maintenance Due.

Editing later

Edit on the plan reopens the builder. Each step saves as you complete it.

Steps 5 to 8 — parts, tools, skills and vendors — are one requirement list to the system. The builder always sends all four together, so use the builder rather than editing requirements piecemeal elsewhere.

Changes apply to occurrences not yet raised. Work orders already created keep the requirements they were raised with, because a job somebody is part-way through should not change under them.