What Is Scheduled Maintenance?

Maintenance teams are responsible for ensuring that all maintenance operations run smoothly. To achieve this, it’s essential to have a maintenance program in place to avoid breakdowns of heavy equipment and key assets. 

Different Types of Scheduled Maintenance

In simple terms, scheduled maintenance is any scheduled maintenance task assigned to a technician to upkeep equipment and ensure it’s in excellent working condition. It can include anything from routine maintenance inspections to a one-time adjustment. The goal of scheduled maintenance is to prevent equipment from malfunctioning or failing, thus reducing costs and avoiding unplanned downtime that can affect production or service. 

There are two types of scheduled maintenance: fixed and floating. The first schedules a preventive maintenance task at a certain time regardless of usage or previous inspections. For example, if an owner’s manual suggests a machine be scheduled for maintenance every six months. Floating scheduled maintenance happens when a usage threshold is met. If, for instance, an aircraft engine has a threshold of 3,500 hours, a maintenance work order is made as soon as it reaches that usage time.

Scheduled Maintenance vs. Planned Maintenance

It’s easy to confuse scheduled maintenance with planned maintenance. However, maintenance teams should understand the difference in order to choose which is appropriate for a given situation. 

Planned maintenance anticipates future tasks and creates, well, a plan for them. This plan includes arranging for necessary equipment and parts to be available, detailing procedures and notifying technicians of future work orders. It also specifies which tasks should be prioritized and who is responsible for each task. 

Comparatively, scheduled maintenance is less complex. It doesn’t require a detailed plan that anticipates future equipment needs or that determines how tasks will be carried out. Instead, it identifies an issue, issues a work order to fix it and assigns the task to a technician within a given deadline. To effectively oversee scheduled procedures, it’s useful to have a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software that facilitates maintenance management.

Benefits of Scheduled Maintenance

Successful maintenance managers often use scheduled maintenance, recognizing its many benefits. Since equipment is inspected, cleaned and repaired regularly, its lifespan is improved. Think about assets in your personal life like the AC unit in your home or air filters in your car: If you keep up with general checkups, they last a lot longer and remain in good condition. 

Improving asset lifespan also reduces maintenance costs since it’s usually less expensive to maintain equipment than to replace it. Likewise, doing several small repairs is more cost-efficient than doing large, expensive repairs. Moreover, scheduled maintenance can translate into less downtime for equipment use. Downtime eats into profit, so the more you can keep equipment working without having to shut it down, the better. 

When equipment is in better working order, it is less likely to malfunction or fail. This, in turn, decreases liability risks and accidents in the workplace. The most important outcome is a positive working environment in which employees are safer. From a managerial perspective, it’s also important to avoid accidents that can cost the company money. 

Finally, because tasks are scheduled, this type of maintenance uses staff time more efficiently. Since work orders normally specify the deadline and who is responsible for completing the task, work is completed faster and prioritization is done accordingly, helping to avoid work order backlogs.

Example of How Maintenance Scheduling Can Decrease Downtime

One of the most famous examples of how beneficial implementing scheduled maintenance strategies can be comes from the aviation industry. Before the 1960s, aircraft malfunctions and accidents were more common than predicted, even though airlines increasingly invested higher amounts into maintenance activities. Planes would stop functioning before their estimated lifespan, and parts would break down prior to their usage threshold.

Of course, any aircraft malfunction poses a huge safety risk to a large number of people, so the Federal Aviation Administration launched a series of programs and studies to find a solution to the problem. In 1965, United Airlines took the data and lessons from these programs to create a technique known as Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), which is the basis of scheduled maintenance. 

The main goal of RCM is to increase safety and reliability while keeping costs down. Once implemented, the program proved to be greatly effective: Fewer planes reported technical issues, and accidents were reduced. United Airlines was able to increase uptime for its assets, thus saving itself money (and headaches). The results were so impressive that in 1978, the U.S. Department of Defense sponsored a report that detailed how it could implement the program within the organization. 

Since then, scheduled maintenance has become standard across several industries. Though RCM has been refined over the decades, it is still considered one of the most reliable and cost-effective ways to manage maintenance processes.

What Is Scheduled Maintenance Critical Percent (SMCP)?

No matter how effective you are as a maintenance team, there will always be overdue maintenance tasks. When this happens, it’s easy to schedule a work order and set a short timeframe as the completion due date. But, what if you have more than one overdue task? In an ideal world, teams would have an endless budget that would allow them to have as many technicians on call for this type of problem. 

But in real life, time and budget are usually restricted, so determining the order of priority is crucial. To do so, teams responsible for equipment calculate the scheduled maintenance critical percent (SMCP). This percentage will give you an idea of which tasks are more critical in real time, given the number of days overdue and how often a task is scheduled. Although calculating the SMCP can take time, it is a great tool that most maintenance teams use to ensure overdue tasks don’t reach a critical condition.

How to Calculate SMCP

Calculating SMCP is very simple once you understand how it works. First, you should determine two numbers: how many days scheduled maintenance is late and the number of days in a maintenance cycle. In other words, how long the task has been overdue and how often the task is supposed to be completed. 

Once you have both numbers, you add them. Then, divide the answer by the number of days in a maintenance cycle, and multiply by 100. The result is your SMCP. When you have more than one task, you should calculate the percentage for each task, and prioritize the highest one. 

Here’s an example to illustrate how this works: You have two overdue scheduled maintenance tasks. Task 1 is supposed to be completed every 60 days and is five days overdue. Task 2 is performed every 90 days and is four days late. Follow the formula above to calculate the SMCP:

Task 1: (5+60) ÷ 60 x 100 = 108.33%

Task 2: (4+90) ÷ 90 x 100 = 104.44%

Since the task with the highest SMCP should be prioritized, you should schedule Task 1 to be completed before Task 2.

What Is Factory Scheduled Maintenance?

Another important concept for managers is factory scheduled maintenance. This is the recommended thresholds or regular intervals that manufacturers provide as guidelines for equipment maintenance. One of the most famous examples is the 30/60/90k principle recommended for car maintenance, in which owners are advised to do a check-up every 30,000, 60,000 and 90,000 miles. The checkup includes small replacements and basic inspection of parts that are indispensable for the safe use of a vehicle. (Think oil changes and brake fluid and transmission fluid checks.)

Similarly, most pieces of equipment will have specific recommendations from the manufacturer. Managers should be aware of factory scheduled maintenance for the assets that fall under their responsibility. Keep in mind that this is often the minimum threshold to keep equipment running and that it doesn’t replace more in-depth inspections or required actions when an issue arises. 

How to Use a CMMS for Scheduled Maintenance

With so many moving pieces, handling scheduled maintenance can be overwhelming. Thankfully, CMMS software now provides inexpensive and efficient solutions. These systems calculate information to determine how often maintenance should be scheduled, freeing up time for other important tasks that can’t be automated. 

A CMMS software like Coast also helps create a scheduled maintenance calendar so teams can visualize future tasks and better manage their time. For managers, this means no more constant reminders or confusion about who performs a task and when. Instead, team members can see the maintenance planner and schedule their work accordingly. 

For the times when you need to communicate with your staff, you can also use a CMMS to send messages or assign tasks directly. In short, you’ll have a comprehensive work order management platform designed to help you take inventory for asset management, create checklists to prepare for equipment failures, manage maintenance history and workflow, and be more efficient — all while mitigating risk.