Maintenance Planner/Scheduler

Synthomer is a leading supplier of high-performance, highly specialised polymers and ingredients that play vital roles in key sectors such as coatings, construction, adhesives, and health and protection – growing markets that serve billions of end users worldwide. Headquartered in London, UK and publicly listed there since 1971, we employ c.3,900 employees across our 5 innovation centres of excellence and more than 29 manufacturing sites across Europe, North America and Asia. Around 20% of our sales volumes are from new and patent protected products.

At our innovation centres of excellence in the UK, Germany, China, Malaysia and Ohio, USA we collaborate closely with our customers to develop new products and enhance existing ones tailored to their needs, with an increasing range of sustainability benefits. Since 2021, we have been proud holders of the London Stock Exchange Green Economy Mark, which recognises green technology businesses making a significant contribution to a more sustainable, low-carbon economy.

Maintenance Planner/Scheduler, Mogadore 

Overview: 

This role reports directly to the Maintenance Manager and is responsible for driving long‑term asset performance and reliability through data‑driven analysis and preventive and predictive strategies. The role leads planning, scheduling, and coordinating preventative, predictive, and regular maintenance work, and performs analysis of work‑order information, project demands, and maintenance execution to identify opportunities to improve processes. The position is accountable for maintaining SAP, training employees on SAP, and ensuring that required inspections are completed and documented on a timely basis. This position also actively participates in activities related to maintenance and reliability excellence, including root‑cause failure analysis and procedure standardization.  

Job Responsibilities: 

• Create integrated maintenance work plans and schedules for supervisors and the maintenance team, covering PM activities, project work, and non‑emergency repairs. 

• Ensure all work orders and maintenance log items are reviewed, entered, and closed in SAP, with complete and accurate supporting documentation. 

• Deliver SAP maintenance training for maintenance and operations personnel. 

• Conduct field walk‑throughs to identify and document job requirements, scope, and procedures. 

• Collaborate with the maintenance manager and supervisor to schedule manpower, resources, and job priorities. 

• Support PSM activities related to job planning and scheduling, ensuring timely completion of action items and proper documentation in SAP/CMMS. 

• Assist the condition monitoring program for the site, ensuring accurate data collection for vibration, oil analysis, thermography, and other predictive technologies. 

• Analyze reliability and failure data to improve equipment performance and reduce unplanned downtime. 

• Participate in Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and methodologies such as FMEA and Bad Actor Management to prevent recurrence. 

• Ensure up‑to‑date equipment criticality assessment, review it regularly, and ensure changes are accurately reflected in the site CMMS. 

• Develop and review maintenance and inspection strategies, Equipment Based Practices (EBPs), and relevant standards based on equipment criticality and risk, including strengthening basic PM routines where needed to address recurring issues and improve reliability. 

• Drive the outputs of RCA, FMEA, Bad Actor analysis, and Criticality study findings into actionable maintenance strategies, including eliminating bad actors, improving spare parts strategy, enhancing CMMS data, and developing CAPEX proposals for end‑of‑life or non‑serviceable assets. 

• Monitor and improve asset performance using KPIs such as MTBF, MTTR, and failure frequency, identifying trends and improvement opportunities. 

• Manage and optimize asset information in the CMMS, ensuring data integrity, updated reliability strategies, and complete asset history. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to resolve chronic issues and implement long-term reliability improvements across Operations, Maintenance, Stores, and Engineering. 

• Support internal and external reliability audits and assessments to ensure compliance, continuous improvement, and alignment with site standards. 

• Contribute to training and knowledge sharing on reliability concepts, tools, condition monitoring technologies, and analysis techniques. 

Qualifications: 

This safety critical position is responsible for long‑term reliability strategy through analysis of equipment history, failure trends, and preventive/predictive maintenance needs while leading the maintenance planning efforts to improve maintenance work efficiency and reduce costs. This role also supports within the Maintenance Workflow by developing detailed job plans to plan, and schedule and collaborate in the coordination of all routine and shutdown maintenance work. The job plans must fully satisfy the notification of scope and include all material, services, resources and appropriate individual operations or tasks. This position must ensure that a sufficient amount of work is planned to maintain plant reliability. 

• Associate in Applied Science degree or a Bachelor’s Degree preferred. 

• 5-7 years of plant maintenance experience with exposure to reliability practices and asset‑performance improvement. 

• 2-3 years of experience as a maintenance planner using CMMS (SAP preferred) 

• 2-3 years of supervisory experience preferably in a maintenance environment 

• Experience in a union environment preferred 

• Experience working in a HPWP 

• Supervisory/People Management Experience 

• SAP Super USER desired though a solid understanding of CMMS/SAP is required to be successful in the position, including the ability to analyze work‑order data to drive reliability improvements. 

• Experience with reliability strategy methodologies such as Root Cause Analysis (RCA), FMEA, Bad Actor management, preventive/predictive optimization, and equipment criticality assessment to support long‑term asset performance improvement. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Strong knowledge of work management processes, labor estimating and resource balancing 

• Strong working knowledge of plant / facilities equipment 

• Strong understanding of skilled crafts such a mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation 

• Strong computer and communication skills 

• Leadership Competency requirements: Demonstrate a working proficiency level in the Competencies of Driving Improvement in Others, Driving and Managing Teamwork, and Communication Effectiveness 

• Core Competency requirements: Customer Orientation, Results Orientation, Technological Orientation, Teamwork, Initiative, Business Ethics and Communication Effectiveness, Relationship Building. 

• Strong verbal and written skills. 

• Coaching, meeting management and facilitation skills 

Working Requirements 

• Must be able to come in on the off shifts as needed once suitable training has been administered 

• This is a salary exempt position with on call responsibilities.  

• Supervisor back-up, PM Shutdown support, off-hours coverage and weekend duty as required.  

• Minimal travel may be required, less than 5-10% 

🌍 Global Benefits Overview

• 💰 Competitive, market-aligned compensation

• 🎯 Discretionary global bonus scheme

• 📈 Discretionary Long-Term Incentive Plan (LTIP) – for senior positions

• 🚗 Company car or car allowance – varies by region and role

• 🩺 Healthcare – tailored to regional locations

• 👶 Parental leave and family support – maternity, paternity, adoption (aligned with regional policies)

• 🏡 Working options – flexibility where it matters, based on role and business needs

• 📚 Learning & development opportunities – training, online platforms, buddy/mentorship programs, Internal Synthomer University with L&D offers

• 💙 Wellbeing support – employee assistance program (EAP), mental health resources, wellbeing initiatives

• 🌱 Retirement / pension contributions – plans vary by country

• 🤝 Culture of Inclusion – where everyone can thrive

• 🏆 Performance culture, global reward & recognition programmes