Technician productivity isn’t a motivation problem, it’s a management system problem. When planning, kitting, and schedule discipline click, wrench time climbs, costs fall, and teams feel proud of the work they complete.
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Some days I didn’t feel like working, and those days dragged. I looked busy because looking busy kept the questions away. The real problem? I wasn’t fully utilized. There wasn’t enough planned maintenance to keep me engaged for a full shift. A good day was simple: a full slate of well‑planned jobs, steady execution, and the satisfaction of real progress.
Utilization is a management outcome. Strong planners and schedulers change the math. When 18% of a tech’s day is spent hunting parts and 24–26% is spent walking to and from jobs, nearly half the day creates no value. Planning and kitting reclaim that time.
Plan the work: technicians stop planning on the fly; job plans bring consistency.
Kit the work: parts, tools, and permits staged in advance; less time lost to searching.
Together, these levers can lift wrench time by ~50%.
Before: 22‑person crew at 18.7% utilization—the equivalent of ~15 FTE idle while seven carried the load; effective labor $285/hour to complete work.
Actions: two techs moved into planner roles; implemented kitting; trained supervisors to remove obstacles and manage in the field.
After (quickly): 42.6% utilization; effective labor $123/hour; inventories −19.8% thanks to better planning and normal lead times.
The assessment revealed a brittle setup: high turnover and no formal engineering team, with supervisors moonlighting as planners and pushing next-day schedules—so no real planning occurred.
Techs repairing on the fly; poor documentation.
81% of corrective work marked “48 hours”
13% of corrective work marked “24 hours”—no prioritization logic.
Utilization <12%; bloated inventory and expedite fees exceeding material costs.
Asset management framework: FMECA/strategies/PMs to align risk and effort.
Work management process guide: identify → plan → schedule → execute → close → analyze.
Material management guide: demand planning, kitting, right part/right time.
Data management guide: hierarchy, BOMs, failure/cause codes, and data quality rules.
Roles & responsibilities: supervisors supervise; dedicated planners and schedulers; assign resources to PdM.
New structure: 1 maintenance manager; 4 supervisors; 4 planners; 2 schedulers.
Weekly scheduling meeting with schedule freeze; storeroom kits PMs & planned work.
Writing process guides; CMMS cleanup (status/failure codes, backlog).
Outcomes: visible culture shift, lower turnover, and restored confidence in maintenance.
30 days
Stand up planning: top 20 job plans (scope, tools, parts, safety, estimates).
Publish priority + SLA matrix; stop marking everything urgent.
Lock failure/cause code sets; require time/parts at closeout.
60 days
Formal plan–schedule cadence with readiness gates and freeze.
Launch kitting for PMs and planned corrective work.
Supervisors coach in the field; verify closeout quality.
90 days
Move 1–2 high‑caliber techs into planner roles.
Review inventory vs planned demand; cut expedites; normalize lead times.
Run 1st RCA cycle; update strategies, job plans, and BOMs; publish a change log.
Leading: plan coverage, kit completeness, schedule adherence, closeout completeness (% time/parts/failure/cause).
Lagging: utilization/wrench time, rework rate, maintenance cost/asset, availability.
Supervisors doing planning “on the side”; no schedule freeze; constant break‑ins; overlong low‑value PMs; missing BOMs; weak failure/cause coding; treating the CMMS like a filing cabinet, not a system of work.