Interactive Reference

The Planner Standard Work Schedule

Every meeting you pull a planner into is a deferred breakdown. Protect the calendar. Protect the plant.

Browse lessons

Plant size

Meetings capped

Field and site work

Planning and office

Lunch

Review and feedback

The baseline planner week

Mid-Size Plant

Closest to the original standard-work infographic: enough complexity to need structure, not enough to justify calendar sprawl.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Meetings capped08:00-08:30

Morning Meeting

Purpose

Create a short daily handoff without turning the planner into the plant's live dispatcher.

What Happens Here

The planner listens for schedule threats, captures emergency work that needs triage, and confirms which planned jobs are still protected.

Checklist

Confirm yesterday's schedule misses and why they missed.
Name today's protected jobs and access windows.
Capture true emergencies for triage instead of solving them in the room.

What Good Looks Like

The meeting ends on time, the planner leaves with decisions instead of assignments, and supervisors own real-time crew direction.

Common Traps

!Letting every urgent-sounding request become the planner's next task.
!Using the meeting to rebuild the schedule from scratch.
!Inviting the planner into follow-up meetings that supervisors should handle.

Manager Coaching Note

Ask, 'What decision does the planner need from us?' If the answer is none, protect the planner's next planning block.

Related Metric

Daily schedule break-ins and reasons by work source.

5 hrs

Total meetings per week. The cap is not a target.

4 days

On the floor scoping jobs. Real time, every week.

1 answer

"No, I am scoping Line 3." The calendar speaks for them.

Not because planners are precious. Because when you pull a planner into a meeting, you just deferred the next breakdown.

Protect the calendar. Protect the plant.

Printable Worksheet

Planner Calendar Audit

Use this to compare your planner's week against the selected standard-work pattern. Print it, walk the calendar, and mark which blocks are protected versus constantly interrupted.

Calendar protection checks

[ ] Daily meetings stay capped and decision-focused.
[ ] Planning blocks are not used as overflow meeting time.
[ ] Field scoping is future-work scoping, not emergency chasing.
[ ] Parts and kits are checked before the job reaches the schedule.
[ ] Break-ins force an explicit tradeoff.

Questions for leaders

Where do we pull the planner into work someone else should own?
Which meeting would still run fine without the planner?
What is our rule for adding work after schedule lock?
Which schedule misses are actually planning-system defects?
What will we stop doing to protect planning time next week?

Open the free Job Plan Template →

Chapter 6 · Plan

The book builds the system behind this.

Planner standard work holds when protected time produces ready-to-execute jobs instead of absorbing dispatching, expediting, and meeting overflow.

Protected time · job plans · kitting

Fix the System

Install the planning boundary, define the output, and measure whether the planner is spending enough time planning future work.

Buy on Amazon Free companion kit

Browse Lessons

Learn by topic, then see where it lives on the calendar.

Cards jump to a matching block. If the lesson belongs to a different plant-size schedule, the tool switches variants first.

Planner Standard Work Worksheet

The Planner Calendar Audit

15:00-16:00Site Inspection Checklist

2. Calendar Protection Checks

Daily meetings stay capped and decision-focused.
Planning blocks are not used as overflow meeting time.
Field scoping is future-work scoping, not emergency chasing.
Parts and kits are checked before the job reaches the schedule.
Break-ins force an explicit tradeoff.

3. Questions for Leaders

Where do we pull the planner into work someone else should own?
Which meeting would still run fine without the planner?
What is our rule for adding work after schedule lock?
Which schedule misses are actually planning-system defects?
What will we stop doing to protect planning time next week?