Maintenance Planner

Job description

Fantastic challenges. Amazing opportunities. GKN Aerospace is reimagining air travel: going further, faster and greener! Fuelled by great people whose expertise and creativity sets the standards in our industry, we’re inspired by the opportunities to innovate and break boundaries. We’re proud to play a part in protecting the world’s democracies. And we’re committed to putting sustainability at the centre of everything we do, opening up and protecting our planet. With over 16,000 employees across 32 manufacturing sites in 12 countries we serve over 90% of the world’s aircraft and engine manufacturers and achieved sales of £3.6bn in 2025. There are no limits to where you can take your career. Job Summary The Maintenance Planner is responsible for planning, scheduling, coordinating, and improving maintenance work execution across production, facilities, utilities, and process equipment. This role oversees preventive maintenance schedules, reactive maintenance coordination, spare parts planning, purchasing support, inventory management, and communication between maintenance, operations, engineering, vendors, and contractors. The ideal candidate has strong maintenance experience, excellent organizational skills, CMMS expertise, and the ability to balance urgent reactive work with long-term preventive maintenance and reliability goals. This position is critical to improving schedule compliance, equipment uptime, maintenance efficiency, spare parts availability, and communication across the site. Job Responsibilities Develop, maintain, and improve preventive maintenance schedules for production, facility, utility, and process equipment. Plan and schedule reactive, corrective, preventive, and predictive maintenance work in coordination with maintenance and operations teams. Review incoming work requests, clarify scope, prioritize work, and ensure work orders contain accurate information. Build detailed job plans including labor requirements, parts, tools, procedures, safety requirements, permits, drawings, vendor support, and estimated downtime. Coordinate with operations to schedule maintenance activities while minimizing impact to production. Manage maintenance backlog, review overdue work, and support prioritization of critical repairs and planned work. Track PM completion, schedule compliance, work order aging, backlog, downtime, and other maintenance KPIs. Complete, update, and manage maintenance documentation, work order records, equipment history, PM plans, and asset data in the computerized maintenance management system, CMMS. Support purchasing activities for maintenance parts, tools, services, consumables, and contractor support. Manage spare parts and inventory planning including min/max levels, reorder points, critical spares, obsolete parts, and cycle count support. Partner with technicians, engineers, operations, and vendors to identify required parts and improve spare parts accuracy. Coordinate vendor and contractor scheduling for planned maintenance, repairs, inspections, calibrations, and project support. Support root cause analysis efforts by reviewing maintenance history, failure trends, downtime events, and recurring work orders. Develop and improve standard work instructions, job plans, PM procedures, maintenance checklists, and planning templates. Participate in daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance planning meetings. Support reliability, continuous improvement, cost reduction, and equipment initiatives. Communicate maintenance schedules, risks, constraints, and resource needs to site stakeholders. Job Qualifications Basic Qualifications: High School Diploma or GED required. Several years of experience in maintenance, facilities, manufacturing, industrial operations, maintenance planning, scheduling, or a related technical environment. Experience using computerized maintenance management systems, CMMS, to create, schedule, update, and close work orders. Strong understanding of preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, reactive work, and maintenance workflow processes. Experience coordinating maintenance work with operations, technicians, contractors, vendors, and support teams. Experience with spare parts, inventory management, purchasing, or maintenance parts coordination. Proficient with Microsoft Office applications including Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Teams. Strong organizational, prioritization, communication, and follow-up skills. Ability to read and interpret equipment manuals, technical documents, drawings, PM procedures, and maintenance records. Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced manufacturing or facilities environment. Strong problem-solving skills and ability to identify gaps in planning, scheduling, parts availability, and maintenance execution. Demonstrated commitment to safety, quality, reliability, and continuous improvement. Preferred Qualifications: Associate degree or Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Facilities Management, Industrial Technology, Business, Supply Chain, Operations Management, or a related field. Certification or formal training in maintenance planning, reliability, supply chain, inventory management, project management, or industrial maintenance. Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional, CMRP, certification. Maintenance planning, scheduling, or reliability certification. Experience with ERP systems, purchasing systems, procurement workflows, and vendor management. Experience managing critical spare parts programs, storeroom inventory, min/max levels, and cycle count processes. Experience in aerospace, chemical processing, metal finishing, heat treatment, industrial manufacturing, or other regulated environments. Experience with PM optimization, reliability-centered maintenance, root cause analysis, failure mode analysis, or continuous improvement programs. Experience with Power BI, dashboards, data visualization, or maintenance reporting tools. Experience writing detailed job plans, PM procedures, standard work, and technical maintenance instructions. Experience supporting shutdown planning, turnaround planning, major equipment repairs, or capital project maintenance coordination. Knowledge of safety requirements including lockout/tagout, confined space, hot work, elevated work, and contractor safety practices. Desired Competencies Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills. Ability to work independently with minimal supervision. Sense of urgency when responding to production downtime. Excellent communication and teamwork. Strong mechanical aptitude and willingness to learn new equipment. Commitment to safety and continuous improvement Compensation: Compensation for this role is $35.00 - $40.00 an hour We’ll offer you fantastic challenges and amazing opportunities. This is your chance to be part of an organisation that has proven itself to be at the cutting edge of our industry; and is committed to pushing the boundaries even further. And with some of the best training on offer in the industry, who knows how far you can go? A Great Place to work needs a Great Way of Working Everyone is welcome to apply to GKN. We believe that we can only achieve our ambitions through a coming together of diverse minds who enjoy collaborating in an inspirational environment. Through our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging and by living our five powerful principles we’ve created a culture where everyone feels welcome to contribute. It’s a culture that won us ‘The Best Workplace Culture Award’. By embracing and celebrating what makes us unique we encourage everyone to bring their full self to work. We’re also committed to providing an accessible recruitment process, so if you require reasonable adjustments at any stage during our recruitment process please get in touch and let us know. We are the place where human dreams, plus human endeavour, shape the future of aerospace innovation and technology. ​ ​