Maintenance Planning: Cuts Waste, and Frustration (Elements of Great Maintenance Management)

Your maintenance crew is skilled, experienced, and ready to work. So why are they spending half their day waiting, searching, and redoing jobs?

The problem is not your people. It never was.

The problem is the planning, or the lack of it. Every hour your tradespeople spend hunting for parts, waiting on permits, or repeating work that was done wrong the first time is an hour of wrench time stolen from your operation. Multiply that across a shift, a week, a year, and the cost is staggering.

Maintenance Planning: Cuts Waste and Frustration is the guide that fixes the planning, so your people can do what they do best.

Internationally acclaimed maintenance expert Joel Levitt, author of 19 books, trainer in 39 countries, and part of the SMRP Body of Knowledge delivers a witty, relatable, and eye-opening breakdown of exactly what is killing your maintenance productivity and precisely what to do about it.

Inside you will learn how to:

• Identify and eliminate the 13 key barriers to effective maintenance planning that are costing you wrench time every single day
• Build robust job plans that give your tradespeople everything they need before they touch the equipment
• Create a living Maintenance Knowledge Library, a system that captures institutional knowledge and makes every future job faster and smarter
• Improve crew productivity by 20% or more without adding headcount or budget
• Shift from reactive chaos to proactive, planned maintenance that respects the expertise of your tradespeople
• Systematically eliminate the time-wasting, morale-draining cycle of unplanned work

This is not a theory book.

It is packed with real-world examples, workplace humor, and graphic illustrations that make the concepts stick. Whether you are a maintenance planner building job plans from scratch, a supervisor trying to get more out of your crew, or a boots-on-the-ground tradesperson tired of being set up to fail, this book will change how you think about maintenance work.

Cut the chaos. Respect the craft. Get the job done right the first time.

Part of the Elements of Great Maintenance Management series by Joel Levitt used by maintenance and reliability teams in manufacturing, oil and gas, food processing, pharmaceuticals, and more.

Perfect for: maintenance planners, maintenance supervisors, reliability engineers, plant managers, and anyone responsible for improving maintenance productivity on the shop floor.