Maintenance Planner

Title: Maintenance Planner

Location: Delhi, LA

About Lamb Weston

You’ve probably enjoyed our fries without even knowing it! As a leading manufacturer in our industry, and public Fortune 500 company, we inspire and bring people together with foods they love and trust. Our customer base includes international food service providers, restaurants, and households in over 100 countries around the world.

A highly innovative global corporation with a start-up mindset, we empower every individual to make a genuine difference. You’ll gain access to hands-on training to fuel your growth and success, explore opportunities for new solutions, and you’ll join a winning team of 10,000+ people all dedicated to raising the bar – together.

If you have a strong drive for results, a desire to help us bring the world together through our fries, and are ready for a fresh challenge, we want to hear from you.

Job Description Summary

The position of Maintenance Planner Utilities plans and schedules the daily activities of the Utilities maintenance crew to ensure maximum productivity and plant reliability. This position will encompass the Utilities area (Boiler and Refrigeration). This position will be heavily involved in the operation and maintenance of the plant’s Ammonia Refrigeration system and will have specific duties in the PSM program.

Job Description

Specifically, the Roles of this position include, but are not limited to:

• Improving maintenance work force effectiveness by eliminating the potential for delays and obstacles through proper planning and coordination of parts, equipment and people.
• Promoting a safe working environment and safe work practices.
• Planning major repairs.
• Planning work for quality with efficiency and contributing to the effective utilization of the R & M budget.
• Maintaining information to permit meaningful analysis of results and work completed.

Essential Roles and Responsibilities

Provides detailed planning of work orders by:

• Traveling to work site to evaluate problem and plan repairs.
• Determining specific location and scope of work.
• Determining material requirements, parts locations and issue slips.
• Identifying special tools, ladders and rigging.
• Providing work procedures where they exist.
• Identifying safety precautions, permits and LOTO requirements.
• Determining staffing requirements and time estimates.
• Identifying craft coordination issues and duplicating work orders as required.
• Providing sketches or drawings as needed.
• Including preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance and precision maintenance in work plans.
• Developing and maintaining a file of best practices (safe work procedures).
• Assisting in decisions to apply Precision Maintenance skills to scheduled jobs.  Providing direction with Precision Maintenance forms and communicates steps and status for bringing equipment worked on to a precision state

Orders materials as needed for work orders by:

• Writing requisitions using SAP.
• Tracking requisitions and following-up as needed to ensure timely delivery of materials.
• Contacting vendors as required to ensure that proper materials are ordered.
• Acting, when necessary, to ensure stores materials are picked up or delivered.
• Informing Team Leads when materials have arrived and job is ready to schedule.
• Helping to control costs by ensuring that unused materials are returned.

·Manages the work order backlog by:

• Verifying work order description, equipment number, crew, priority and location priority.
• Working with Production Area Leads and Maintenance Team Leads at the Daily Planning Meeting to delete duplicate or unnecessary work orders.
• Forwarding work orders for additional approval or engineering required.
• Adding comments to history and closing completed work orders.
• Periodically reviewing backlog to determine if work request is still appropriate.
• Maintains a planned backlog of routine and shutdown work using a priority system.

Participates in the scheduling of work process by:

• Participating with the area production leads and the maintenance leads in the Daily Planning Meeting by consulting with them regarding equipment or facilities to be maintained.
• Sharing in the setting of priorities for planning and scheduling of all non-emergency work with the Area Production Leads and Maintenance Leads.
• Participating in daily meetings between maintenance leads and area production leads to communicate job plans and schedules and in identifying jobs that will not be completed per the schedule and must be carried over to the following week.
• Recommending to operations long-range maintenance needs and preparing a weekly forecast of all jobs scheduled for the following week.
• Ensures jobs are prepped for shutdowns.
• Prepares Shutdown packages
• Supervises shutdown critique process and documents.

Maintains existing records and adds new equipment records to the SAP system by:

• Creating new locations as required.
• Making equipment transfers.
• Adding new equipment specifications.
• Entering new and updating existing equipment specifications.
• Tagging equipment in the field.
• Building and adding bill of materials.
• Participating in inventory adjustment/reduction.

Ensures the availability of adequate critical spare parts and acts as a resource for locating spare parts by:

• Learning “parts finding” techniques in SAP.
• Writing work orders and purchase requisitions as needed to in house services or outside vendors to complete rebuilding and repair of spare equipment.
• Following-up and tracking rebuilds and repairs of spare equipment to completion.
• Identifying and resolving the status of unused parts.
• Building new and updating existing Bills of Materials.

The Maintenance Planner participates in the plant safety program by assisting and supporting the maintenance leader in completing safety activities including housekeeping, audits, inspections, and meetings. From feedback received from the craftpersons in the field, the Planner is a key person in monitoring the Precision Maintenance status of equipment in the area and he is responsible for ensuring that the correct entries in regard to precision maintenance are entered into historical records and for initiating new work orders to bring the equipment to precision maintenance state during future opportunities. By examining History Records and recognizing repeating failures, the Planner is responsible for identifying and communicating suspect equipment. Acts as a technical resource for the Root Cause Failure Analysis process.

Basic & Preferred Qualifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty as listed previously in the Responsibilities section satisfactorily.  The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required.  Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Education

Associate’s Degree (AA) or equivalent from a two-year college or technical school in mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, or electromechanical maintenance.  Applicants with work experience in these fields will also be considered.  Experience in Food Processing preferred.  Previous experience as a Maintenance Planner or Supervisor preferred.

Language Skills

Must have the ability to read and comprehend instructions, short correspondence, and memos.  Must have the ability to write correspondence.  Must have the ability to effectively present information in a one-on-one and small group situations to vendors and other team members.  Must have the ability to understand equipment drawings, schematics, diagrams and operating instructions.

Reasoning Ability

Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardization exists.  Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.  Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to stand; walk; use hands and arms to handle, feel, and reach.  The employee is occasionally required to climb or balance and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl.  The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 100 pounds. 

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job.  Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently exposed to wet and/or humid conditions; will regularly work near moving mechanical parts; fumes or airborne particles and outside weather conditions.  The noise level in the work environment requires hearing protection.

Mathematical skills

Ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals.  Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent and to draw and interpret graphs.

Other Qualifications

• Strong work ethic and employment history
• Strong PC skills, to include Windows, Word, Excel, and SAP
• Excellent organization, communication and problem solving skills
• May be required to work any and all days of the week or overtime in accordance with production and maintenance schedules.

Industry-Competitive Benefits

Coupled with our compensation and bonus incentive programs, our benefits deliver rewards that are market competitive.  Some of the most attractive elements of our benefit programs include:

• Health Insurance Benefits - Medical, Dental, Vision

• Flexible Spending Accounts for Health and Dependent Care, and Health Reimbursement Accounts

• Well-being programs including companywide events and a wellness incentive program

• Paid Time Off

• Financial Wellness – Industry leading 401(k) plan with generous company contributions, Financial Planning Services, Employee Stock purchase program, and Health Savings Accounts, Life and Accident insurance

• Family-Friendly Employee events

• Employee Assistance Program services – mental health and other concierge type services

Benefits may vary based on location, job role/level, job status, and/or the terms of any applicable collective bargaining agreements.

Job Requisition ID: Req-259597

Time Type: Full time

The anticipated close date is a good faith estimate for when this job will be closed. Some jobs may be unposted or filled earlier or later than the Anticipated Close Date depending on interview processes and business needs. Anticipated Close Date: 02/06/2026

In compliance with applicable state and local laws, Lamb Weston has opted to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation for this role. This compensation is specific to this position and takes into account a number of variables. Actual compensation may be higher or lower in the range based on various factors, including, but not limited to a candidate’s work location, job duties, experience and expertise. A reasonable hourly estimate of the range for this role based on the variables previously mentioned is: $42.56

Lamb Weston is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, disability, veteran status or any other protected factor under federal, state or local law