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.

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.