Maintenance Planner Salary, Qualifications & Role Expectations

Are you currently interested in the manufacturing field, but looking to step into the management side of it? A maintenance planner could be the perfect role for you to consider.

In this role, you would be responsible for ensuring technicians can do their jobs. As a maintenance planner, you maximize production and minimize equipment downtime. You’ll have to collaborate between various departments to determine their availability and make sure parts and equipment are available as well. You’ll be essential in ensuring projects get finished in a timely manner and that there are no scheduling conflicts. If this role sounds like a great fit for you, keep reading to learn:

• Role qualifications
• Maintenance planner expectations
• What salary you can expect
• How to increase your salary in the role

After reading this article, you’ll have the information you need to take the next steps on your exciting career journey.

What Qualifications do you Need in this Role?

Like any other career, maintenance planners have to meet certain qualifications to land the role. Having experience in the manufacturing field is helpful since this is where you’ll be in this role.

To be a maintenance planner, you’ll need a mix of hard and soft skills. The hard skills will help you understand how much time each project will take. Since you know the technical process, you’ll be able to accurately schedule technicians for projects.

Soft skills are social skills that will help you collaborate with people in various departments. You’ll be able to prioritize projects based on the needs of various supervisors, managers, and employees. Plus, you’ll be able to work well with your own supervisor as well.

As a maintenance planner, you’ll be expected to problem solve in challenging situations. For example, other managers may have disagreements about the priority of projects. Or you might run into trouble with equipment availability. Having the analytical skills to find solutions is critical to helping your organization achieve maximum productivity.

What are the Role Expectations?

The role expectation of maintenance planners is spelled out in the title of the role: “planners.” Your top responsibility will be to plan projects—including corrective and preventative services. To do this, you’ll have to be able to accurately prioritize tasks.

You’ll also manage:

• Documentation
• Work orders
• Assets
• Employee training

To manage these, you’ll use a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Expect to navigate this software independently, making computer skills essential to excel in this role.

Along with planning, you’ll also need excellent coordination skills. As a maintenance planner, you’ll also coordinate:

• The stockroom and part availability
• Plant-wide shutdowns

If the thought of being a maintenance planner still sounds interesting to you, you’re probably wondering what salary you can expect.

What Maintenance Planner Salary can you Expect?

Salary is one of the most important aspects of a role. Even if this role sounds like a great fit for you, it has to meet your financial goals. Luckily, your salary expectations for this role are high.

Maintenance planner salaries will vary depending on location, background, experience, and education. Because of all those discrepancies, U.S. salaries have a huge range of $21,700 to $133,926.

Despite the huge range, most maintenance planners are on the higher end of the salary. The median salary for people in this role is $94,228.

Entering this role, you have great potential to make a high salary. The median salary for the United States population, in general, was $34,248.45 in 2019. As a maintenance planner, you’ll be making well above the average U.S. citizen.

How to Increase your Maintenance Planner Salary

To maximize your maintenance planner salary, here’s what you can do:

• Earn bachelor’s or master’s degree (for example, in business or engineering)
• Learn how to use the CMMS
• Get experience in the manufacturing field (you typically need 4-7 years in a related role, such as facilities management or manufacturing)

Keep in mind, these are just tips to increase your salary. 50% of maintenance planners have a GED or high school diploma. Even if you aren’t interested in earning a college education, being a maintenance planner is a great career for you.

What Skills Should you Highlight on your Resume?

Creating a resume is the most important part of your career journey. Drafting an effective resume can land you a great role and increase your salary.

When you’re creating a resume to apply for maintenance planner roles, you should highlight your hard skills, including:

• CMMS
• Communication skills
• Computer skills
• Maintenance
• Manufacturing
• Mechanical knowledge
• Microsoft Suite

These hard skills are extremely important, but so are soft skills. Soft skills are even more important than hard skills because they’re practically impossible to teach. Most employers are primarily looking for prospective maintenance planners that have the soft skills necessary for the role.

Soft skills might feel weird to include on a resume, but given how important they are, you should absolutely include them. Here are the top soft skills we recommend including on your maintenance planner resume:

• Organization
• Analytical
• Attention to detail
• Problem-solving
• Collaborative
• Effective communicator
• Able to see problems and delays before they even arise

To create the most effective resume, include both hard and soft skills to showcase how amazing you would be in the role. Aside from skills, also be sure to include any work experience you have in a manufacturing setting. If you have experience managing maintenance, highlight that role as well.

We tend to want to rush through our resumes, but this step is what can make or break your career. It’s the difference between landing a bunch of interviews versus getting none. It’s the first point of contact, and you want to make an amazing first impression.

Your Resume is Key

Having a great resume is essential. It’s challenging to create an effective resume that catches the attention of prospective employers. We know how hard greeting resumes is, so that’s why we want to help. We’ll make an effective resume that will land you interviews in minutes.

Check out our resumes specifically tailored for maintenance planners!