Maintenance planners plan the work, or do they, or are they really schedulers, or gate keepers on resources?  Planning and scheduling are different activities – the first is about scope, sequence, parts, permits, tools, etc., while the second is about allocation of available resources based on priority needs.  With that in mind, maybe the first thing to do is commit to actually planning the work, not just scheduling;  then move on to updating the PMs in your system- check motor is not a PM, it’s a hope, so gradually develop PMs based on failure modes and consequence, and avoiding or detecting those failure indicators early; next you might want to update your equipment hierarchy, performing an equipment criticality review and update along the way; Insist on good equipment/failure histories it broke and we fixed it isn’t nearly sufficient; prepare a checklist for kitting parts as part of the planning process; communicate with technicians to better understand the work and improve planning; and related to that, understand the plant, how it works, where the difficult areas are; Pass on your success, mentoring others, bringing them along; and finally, stay away from firefighting – figure out a way to stop the fires happening.