In most steel plants, the production plan and the maintenance plan are built by different people, in different systems, against different targets. Production protects the campaign. Maintenance protects the PM due date. When the two plans meet on the shop floor, someone loses, and it is usually the PM that slips or the sequence that ends early. This guide shows how to agree shared downtime windows before the clash, and how an AI scheduling agent helps both planners do it. See it negotiate a real week in a short scheduling agent demo.
One Shared Downtime Window Instead of Two Competing Plans
The iFactory Scheduling Agent reads production campaigns and PM due dates, then proposes shared downtime windows that both planners can accept. When a conflict appears, it alerts the production and maintenance planners by voice, with the options already worked out.
Why Two Good Plans Still Collide
Neither side is wrong. A production planner who stops a caster sequence early pays for a new tundish and a restart. A maintenance planner who lets a PM slip carries the risk of a failure in the middle of the next campaign. The conflict comes from planning alone and negotiating late, often at the morning meeting on the day the work should start. Talk through your own planning cycle with our scheduling team.
- Order book, due dates and grade mix
- Caster sequences and rolling rounds already promised
- Restart costs, transition coils and yield loss
- Maintenance asking for time with little notice
- PM due dates, tolerances and overdue backlog
- Crew hours, contractors and parts on hand
- Condition alarms that will not wait for a month-end stop
- Windows that open and close without warning
The Campaigns That Decide Where Steel's Natural Windows Are
Steel units do not run in steady batches. They run in campaigns, and each campaign has a natural end where stopping costs little. A caster sequence ends with a planned tundish change or turnaround. A hot strip mill rolling round ends with a work roll change. On a hot strip mill, rounds are often built in a "coffin" shape: start narrow, rise to the widest product as the rolls warm, then step back down to narrow as they wear. Those ends are where maintenance time is cheapest. Map your own campaign ends in a campaign mapping session.
Four Kinds of Window, Four Different Negotiations
Not every window is agreed the same way. A roll change gap is already in the production plan, so the negotiation is only about what fits inside it. A weekly maintenance shift is a standing agreement that both sides protect. An annual outage is a project with its own scope and budget. An unplanned stop is a surprise, and the only question is which ready jobs can start before the unit restarts. Review your window types with our support team.
A Conflict Raised Days Ahead, Not at the Morning Meeting
The iFactory Scheduling Agent watches campaign plans and PM due dates together. When they collide, both planners hear about it by voice, with the shared window options already costed in hours and jobs.
How the Agent Builds a Shared Window Proposal
The agent does the reading and matching that planners rarely have time for. It never moves a campaign or a PM on its own. It produces a proposal, explains the trade, and waits for both planners to accept, revise or reject it. Every decision is kept, so next week's proposals learn from this week's. Walk through the logic in a planning workshop.
A Weekly Window Meeting That Ends in One Agreed Schedule
Doc Palmer's Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook sets out a one-week schedule that assigns work for every available labour hour, agreed in a weekly meeting where operations is present. Palmer argues it is better to load the schedule fully and break it than to under-load it and meet it, and he measures adherence with schedule compliance. Many plants then freeze the week once both sides sign. Use this checklist as a start, and ask our support team for a version built around your units.
Ready Jobs for the Stop Nobody Planned
DNV describes opportunistic maintenance as a form of preventive maintenance that takes advantage of a planned or unplanned shutdown to replace items while the system is already down. In a steel plant, a breakdown in one unit often stops the next one too. If ready jobs are sorted by how long they take, the shift supervisor can start the right ones within minutes of the stop. Build your ready list with our maintenance planners.
Three Typical Clashes and How a Shared Window Settles Them
These are illustrations of how the agent usually responds, not case studies. The final call always stays with your planners and your own procedures. Bring a recent clash to a scheduling review and we will walk through it.
A Shared Window Record Both Planners Sign
Every agreed window should leave a record that production, maintenance and the shift team read the same way. Use these fields as a template, with or without an agent. Request a blank copy from our planning team.
Size the Value With Your Own Numbers
The clearest value comes from using campaign-end gaps that already exist, so fewer PMs need dedicated downtime. The example uses assumed inputs only, to show the arithmetic. Replace each one with figures from your plant, and our team can help you build the full case.
Those hours no longer compete for the weekly maintenance shift. Value them at your own rate for dedicated downtime, then add planner time saved on reconciling two plans. Leave failure-avoidance savings out unless your own history supports them.
Scheduling Agent, Voice Alerts and NVIDIA Server in One Package
iFactory delivers the Scheduling Agent as a turnkey bundle. A pre-configured NVIDIA AI server ships racked and ready with the agent, the campaign readers and the voice service pre-loaded, so planning data stays on site. You rack it, plug in power and Ethernet, and the AI is live. To scope it for your plant, request a turnkey quote.
- Pre-configured NVIDIA AI edge server, racked and ready
- Readers for caster, rolling and melt shop plans
- CMMS link for PM due dates, tolerances and crew hours
- Shared window proposals sent to both planners
- Voice alerts to planners' headsets and handhelds
- Window records and weekly compliance review
- 24×7 remote monitoring of the agent and hardware
Production plans and CMMS linked, campaign ends and window types mapped for each unit.
The agent drafts proposals alongside the weekly meeting, and planners compare them with their own.
Proposals and voice alerts switched on, planners trained, weekly review started.
Integrated Scheduling Without Taking the Decision From Planners
iFactory sits between the production plan and the CMMS and keeps both sides looking at the same windows. Our support team can walk you through a pilot plan.
What Plant Managers Ask About Production and Maintenance Scheduling
Agree the Window Before the Campaign Starts
Read campaigns and PM due dates together, propose shared downtime windows and alert both planners by voice when a conflict appears. The full system is delivered turnkey and goes live in 6 to 12 weeks.
