Maintenance Planner

Overview

• Coordinate and control all planned and corrective maintenance activities across the Grains manufacturing site, ensuring seamless execution and minimal disruption to operations.
• Plan, sequence, and schedule preventative, predictive, and statutory maintenance across processing, packing, and utility areas to maximize asset reliability and plant availability.
• Drive compliance with food safety standards and engineering best practices while maintaining strict cost control and operational efficiency.
• Collaborate closely with Receiving, Production, Engineering, Stores and Dispatch to ensure alignment of maintenance plans with operational priorities.
• Ensure readiness of all maintenance activities by verifying notifications and creating work orders, labor allocation, tools, material and spares availability in advance.
• Maintain and govern CMMS (SAP S4 HANA/Fiori) by ensuring accurate work order creation, execution tracking, and closure, enabling reliable data integrity.
• Capture and analyze maintenance data to support root cause analysis, performance tracking, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Produce clear and actionable reports to support decision-making, improve equipment performance, and optimize maintenance strategies.

Responsibilities

• Develop and optimize maintenance work plans by implementing structured processes, incorporating root cause analysis (RCA) and life cycle management principles.
• Design and implement equipment-specific maintenance schedules aligned with Food Safety, EHS requirements, MESS and PEMM methodology.
• Monitor, analyze, and report on maintenance KPIs, trends, and the full engineering scorecard to support performance improvement.
• Contribute to maintenance budgeting by analyzing historical data and applying budgeting principles to improve cost control.
• Ensure CMMS (SAP S4 Hanna/Fiori) data integrity by validating work orders, verifying artisan inputs, and maintaining strict document control standards.
• Train and support maintenance and production teams on maintenance procedures and effective utilization of the CMMS system.
• Integrate maintenance plans with production schedules to minimize downtime and maximise operational efficiency.
• Lead forward planning activities (weekly, monthly, annual) for maintenance tasks, labour, and materials to ensure consistent and effective execution.
• Accurately scope and estimate maintenance work, including duration, priority, resource requirements, spares, tools, specialist services, and materials.
• Plan and coordinate contract labour to supplement internal resources and meet maintenance workload demands.
• Identify and manage critical equipment and spares through structured criticality assessments.
• Maintain work order closure compliance by actively monitoring, managing, and driving timely completion and close-out of all maintenance job cards.
• Develop, update, and optimize preventive and predictive maintenance programmes across receiving, production, packing, and utilities to ensure maximum equipment reliability.
• Lead pre-maintenance planning meetings to align Engineering, Production, and Contractors on scope, priorities, and execution strategy.
• Plan and coordinate major shutdowns, breakdown repairs, and seasonal maintenance activities, integrating maintenance with production schedules and cleaning cycles.
• Determine and manage spares requirements through criticality assessments, ensuring availability of critical parts, tools, and equipment.
• Coordinate external service providers and statutory inspections to ensure compliance and operational readiness.
• Ensure execution readiness by defining clear job scopes, safety procedures, permit requirements, LOTO compliance, and food safety controls for all work orders.
• Chair post-maintenance reviews to assess execution quality, identify gaps, and track deferred or incomplete work.
• Monitor and report on maintenance KPIs, Asset Care indicators, backlog, and schedule adherence to drive performance improvements.
• Plan and track condition monitoring activities (e.g., vibration analysis, thermography) to proactively identify and mitigate equipment risks.
• Maintain engineering documentation and asset records, including drawings, P&IDs, OEM manuals, SOPs, and equipment history for audit and traceability purposes.
• Collaborate daily with Engineering Manager, Technicians, Production Supervisors, Stores, and external vendors to align maintenance activities with operational priorities.
• Train and support teams on maintenance procedures and effective use of SAP to strengthen process adherence and data quality.

Qualifications

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in maintenance planning, maintenance coordination, or engineering maintenance within a manufacturing or FMCG environment.
• Proven experience in maintenance planning and scheduling, including preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance.
• Experience working with CMMS systems (preferably SAP S4 Hana/Fiori) for work order management, planning, and reporting.
• Demonstrated experience in shutdown planning, backlog management, and resource coordination.
• Exposure to food safety, EHS standards, and statutory compliance within a plant environment.
• Experience working with automated production systems, PLC's, drives and modern plant equipment.

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Qualifications requirements:

• Minimum Qualifications:
• Certificate N5 min, or Diploma Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial or equivalent).
• Trade Test qualification.
• SAP PM / CMMS (S4 Hana/Fiori) certification or formal training.