Maintenance Planner

Role overview

PepsiCo is seeking a Maintenance Planner for its Prospection Plant Snacks site in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. Reporting to the Maintenance Manager, this position is focused on improving technical availability, asset reliability, and the effectiveness of planned maintenance by managing the maintenance planning process, protecting data quality, applying analytical problem-solving, and embedding reliability engineering practices.

The role brings together disciplined preventive maintenance system administration with reliability-led improvements aimed at reducing unplanned stoppages, preventing repeat breakdowns, and strengthening the long-term maintenance strategy.

About PepsiCo

PepsiCo serves consumers more than one billion times each day across over 200 countries and territories. In 2021, the company delivered over $79 billion in net revenue, supported by a food and beverage portfolio that includes well-known brands such as Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker, and SodaStream.

The company’s vision is to lead globally in beverages and convenient foods through PepsiCo Positive (pep+), a transformation focused on sustainability and human capital. In South Africa, PepsiCo products are part of daily life across meals, work, sport, and travel, with brands including Simba, Lay’s, Liqui Fruit, and the Bokomo cereal range. PepsiCo South Africa employs more than 13,000 people across Bakeries, Grains, Foods, Fruit, Snacks, Juice, and Beverages.

Maintenance planning and scheduling

• Create weekly provisional and confirmed maintenance schedules that align with production, quality, utilities, and safety needs, while ensuring weekly planning meetings follow the required PeMM attendee list and agenda.
• Develop, maintain, and continuously improve a 12-month master maintenance plan covering estimated durations, trade allocation, spare parts, seasonal shutdowns, A&B spares, and reactive forecasts based on historic patterns.
• Make sure labour, materials, contractors, permits, and safety pre-checks are fully prepared before work begins.

CMMS master data and work order control

• Ensure work orders comply with the PeMM data standard, including correct work type, activity, failure and cause codes, timestamps, detailed descriptions, statuses, and priorities, with a target of improving data quality by more than 80%.
• Keep equipment master records accurate and ensure new assets are entered with the correct structure, functional locations, maintenance plans, and classifications in line with CMMS playbooks.
• Monitor and manage backlog levels so that work orders older than 30 days remain below 1% of the total backlog.

Maintenance strategy and preventive programme execution

• Translate OEM tasks into maintenance plans built on RCM and FMEA principles, and review those plans annually to ensure they remain aligned to asset criticality.
• Drive strong preventive maintenance execution, aiming for more than 80% planned work compliance and supporting lower reactive workload.
• Embed condition monitoring activities such as lubrication, vibration checks, thermography, oil analysis, and inspections into the CMMS with the correct intervals and routes.

Spares, BOMs, and inventory coordination

• Develop and maintain equipment bills of materials in the CMMS, targeting more than 80% completeness and accuracy across location, quantity, and part-number detail.
• Confirm that parts are reserved for all planned work, use JIB shelves effectively, and review unused reserved items every quarter.
• Assist the inventory team with criticality assessments, obsolescence checks, MRP settings, and alignment of spares to Global IMA standards.

Reliability, RCA, and loss analysis support

• Support the closure and follow-up of root cause analysis actions for qualifying downtime events, including events longer than 4 hours for Beverages, and ensure RCA actions link back into the CMMS with completion verified.
• Maintain structured top-loss analysis covering downtime, MTBF, MTTR, high-cost items, high-usage spares, and OEM performance, and contribute to monthly maintenance scorecard updates.
• Ensure work orders capture findings that can be used to improve maintenance plans, change intervals, or inform design modifications.

Contractor and service provider coordination

• Plan, scope, and review contractor work to ensure quality execution, and record contractor labour hours and costs in the CMMS, with more than 75% capture needed to score “At Standard.”
• Prepare job packs, risk assessments, permits, spare-part lists, and safe-work requirements for contractor activities.

EHS and compliance-driven maintenance

• Schedule and track all legally required inspections, including lifting equipment, boilers, compressors, electrical HV/LV testing, and fire systems, with 100% scheduling and tracking and more than 90% completion by the target date.
• Support GEHSMS implementation through maintenance-based compliance activities such as preventive inspections, walkdowns, and Gemba checks.

Documentation and knowledge management

• Keep technical SOPs, lubrication maps, condition-monitoring checklists, and task instructions current, and update them after RCAs or equipment changes.
• Ensure electrical drawings, PLC backups, and P&IDs are stored correctly, version-controlled, and traceable in line with PeMM change-control requirements.

KPI reporting and governance

• Monitor and report monthly PeMM measures including unplanned downtime, planned work compliance, technician utilisation, reactive percentage, stock value versus CARV, training hours, and maintenance costs versus CARV.
• Drive actions that help move the site from a reactive or “moving to control” state toward an “innovative @ standard” performance level.

Continuous improvement and lean maintenance

• Lead or support improvement work such as lubrication optimisation, condition monitoring deployment, A3 problem solving, MIAP actions, cost reduction, and spare-parts rationalisation.
• Embed PeMM recommendations into day-to-day maintenance practices and governance routines.
• Take part in weekly, monthly, and period maintenance reviews, bringing evidence-based updates.

Qualifications and experience

The preferred background includes 3 to 5 years of industrial experience, ideally gained in food manufacturing or FMCG. Strong experience in maintenance planning, preventive systems, and PM optimisation is important, along with substantial hands-on use of CMMS platforms such as SAP S/4HANA and Fiori for data integrity, reporting, and analysis. Exposure to reliability methods such as RCA and RCM/FMEA is also required.

Analytical and digital capability

The role calls for the ability to conduct Pareto analysis, cost summaries, MTBF/MTTR reviews, lifecycle costing, and failure-trend analysis, together with solid problem-solving and data interpretation skills. High proficiency in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Power BI, and CMMS reporting tools is expected.

Leadership and interpersonal capability

The successful candidate should be able to train, influence, and facilitate multidisciplinary teams. A background of 2 to 3 years in supervisory or management responsibilities, either direct or indirect, would be an advantage. Strong communication, presentation, decision-making, and organisational skills are needed to manage several priorities at once.

Preferred certifications

Helpful qualifications include a Six Sigma Green Belt or another analytical problem-solving certification, as well as formal training in RCM, FMEA, or PFMEA.

Equal opportunity

PepsiCo states that it is an equal opportunity employer in line with the Employment Equity Act.