Maintenance Planning and Scheduling: (What Is Mobile Plant Scheduling?)

On Overview Of Preventive Maintenance

Did you know that you already have the most important tool you need for great mobile plant maintenance? In this day and age, one of the most useful tools in the construction and HVAC industry can be found in most people’s back pockets. The versatile mobile phone can be one of the most effective ways to connect your office and field seamlessly with the assistance of great software and mobile apps. To achieve efficient asset management and plant management in your business, here are the key points you need to know.

What is Mobile Plant Scheduling & Planning?

A mobile plant is equipment, tools, machinery or components that use propulsion under the control of a technician or operator to move. Key examples of mobile plant include:

• Forklifts
• Prime movers
• Bobcats
• Excavators
• Rollers
• Graders
• Cranes
• Delivery vehicles

A key part of plant and equipment maintenance is having an easy scheduling system. Mobile plant scheduling and planning is essential to ensure that you have a high quality of work, your technicians are consistent and that you are meeting all your regulations and requirements.

What’s The Difference Between “Planning” and “Scheduling”?

Maintenance planning can be defined as the process of preparing all your materials, tools and parts necessary for your job. This can include processes such as ordering or inventorying spare parts, performing quality assurance or creating checklists or instructions for a particular job.

Maintenance scheduling is the actual time based planning of when you expect work to be completed. This can include assigning technicians to your job, contacting your customer and adding your jobs into a shared calendar.

While maintenance planning and scheduling are different by definition, they go hand in hand to ensure the smooth process of completing maintenance jobs.

Want to know the best way to manage your calendar? See all the details about job management.

Does Mobile Plant Preventive Maintenance Actually Work?

For construction plant and heavy equipment, planned maintenance can have a wide variety of benefits. These benefits include:

• Reducing emergency equipment downtime or breakdowns
• Reducing hefty repair & maintenance costs
• Increased productivity
• Minimize safety hazards and risks
• Build stronger customer relationships
• Increase equipment and plant longevity
• Make it easier to budget and prepare
• Balance your workflow and cashflow

What To Look For In Your Maintenance Planner

In the commercial and HVAC industry, there are some key characteristics you need to look for when selecting your mobile plant scheduler and planner. Your maintenance planner will need to have:

• Easy access to data
• Great work order management
• Knowledge of manufacturer’s recommendations
• Trade experience in the field
• Proactive approach to work
• Logical thinking
• Good communication skills

The 5 Key Steps You Need To Ensure Your Maintenance Plan Succeeds

For your mobile plant maintenance to become a successful endeavour, you need to have the right plan and preparation in place. Here are the 5 steps you need to know to ensure that your planned mobile maintenance has the best chance of success:

1. Know Your Maintenance Requirements

Do you know what type of maintenance your mobile plant equipment requires? Preventive maintenance is one of the most effective ways of performing your maintenance tasks. The key to preventive maintenance is finding the problem and fixing it before it causes damage or significant wear and tear. A simple example of this is regularly topping up or changing oil in a vehicle or machine. This task ensures that you never are causing damage to your engine by running your machine without oil. Preventive maintenance is all about prevention and can significantly increase the longevity of your mobile plant equipment.

2. Train Your Team

Getting your team on the same page is essential to ensuring that your workflow runs smoothly. When scheduling field service work, you want to have the confidence that your technicians are all well trained in the correct procedures and tasks they need to produce high quality work every time.

3. Have a 5 Star Safety Plan

The construction and commercial industries have some of the highest fatality and injury statistics in their fields. Mobile plant maintenance can become a large contributor to these statistics due to the hazards they present.

Some of the key risks involving mobile plant equipment include:

• Moving materials
• Unloading or loading equipment
• Securing trailers
• Blind spots
• Poor communication on site
• Reversing or moving equipment
• Pedestrians or high traffic areas
• Uneven surfaces

Here are 9 Construction Accident & Safety Statistics you need to know to ensure safety is high on your priority list.

4. Have a Job Plan & a Great Checklist

The key to high quality work every time is a thorough job plan and checklist. To ensure that your technicians are following the correct PPE and safety requirements and completing the job as needed, a checklist can be an efficient way to do this.

Mobile plant equipment and machinery can require complex servicing. By building a checklist that details everything your technician needs to do from the ground up, you can make sure that nothing is missed, no matter how small.

Do you have an implementation plan in your company?

5. Take Your Mobile Plant Maintenance Mobile

The best way to ensure that your mobile plant maintenance ticks all the right boxes is to have all your checklists, asset history, manuals and part numbers easily accessible from your mobile phone.

With the ability to access all you need from your mobile phone, with just a few clicks, your technician can access all the information they need (without the phone call to the office and trip back to the warehouse to find part numbers). When you have the right asset management tools in your business, not only do you have a high quality of work, but you also save valuable time.

How To Make Your Mobile Maintenance Effective (Without The Added Frustration)

One of the easiest and most efficient ways to ensure that you have effective mobile plant maintenance (without the added frustration), is to have a great software solution in your business. Breakdown costs and out of sync department managers don’t have to be the normal in your business. With the right inspection and production management, you can put your business on the right track.

FieldInsight is an all-in-one software solution that helps automate your workflow and do the heavy lifting for you. With FieldInsight you can customise reports, create checklists and track your technicians in the field to ensure that your mobile plant maintenance is 5/5 stars.

What are you waiting for… book a demo today and get started with great mobile plant maintenance in your business straight away.