What Are the Best Practice and Process to Organize Work Orders?

The organization has lots of assets and equipment they need to maintain regularly if maintenance is done on time, then asset performance starts decreasing, asset breakdown chances are increased. That is why proper tracking of work is crucial and this is where the work order process is required in the maintenance!

What Is Work Order?

Work order is an activity or task that is assigned to an employee. It can be a simple 5-minute task, or it can be long complex work that can several hours. A work order can be requested by the customer or by the company employee itself.

For maintenance work orders you must provide a checklist to the maintenance team that makes your equipment efficient and ensure that required work is delivered and rectified.

A work order must be tracked, prioritized so that more productive work is done. An organized work order system ensures that quality.

Work and better customer service are provided to the customer. Maintenance work order helps keep equipment in good condition.

Also Read: What Are the Objectives & Functions of Maintenance Management?

The work order management market size is growing at a good speed and people are understanding its importance.

According to Markets and Markets,  “The global work order management systems market was valued at USD 358.2 million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD 694.6 million by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.9% during the forecast period. The forecast period is from 2018 to 2023”.

What Are the Best Practices to Organize Work Orders?

Best practices to organize work orders are discussed below:

1. Document Every Work Order

Every scheduled maintenance work shall be properly documented. Otherwise, it will affect the productivity of the maintenance team.

For instance, if maintenance work is done without proper documentation, then there will be no history or data of the problem. In the future if the equipment is having the same issue, then you will not know due to no data and the technician will provide the same solution.

Therefore, time wasted no productive solution is delivered that is why documentation for every work is important. There should be a rule strictly followed that is no maintenance work will be done without work order documentation.

2. Use Automated Software

If you want to organize work orders first you must implement automated software such as CMMS (Computerized maintenance management system). This software has the potential to change the whole working scenario of maintenance management and work order management.

This software automates the work order process and keeps things simple and easy. It provides lots of benefits such as maintenance scheduling.

For upcoming maintenance tasks, it alerts the maintenance team via alert and notification. It means that you do not have to remember manually.

All the tasks are mentioned in each work order, so the maintenance team knows what are the activities that need to be done in each work order.

Furthermore, this software provides information in real-time. This helps track and monitor work order status. It allows the manager to update customers about the work order status.

Whenever the work order process begins it alert the team and a particular member of the maintenance team about new work order allocation.

Also Read: What Are the Steps to Improve the Asset Maintenance Process?

3. Work Order Priority

Setting work order priority is significant for the organization to deliver efficient work. It shall be the practice of every organization which has a lot of work order.

It can be a very important practice, especially for the maintenance team as they will know which equipment needs maintenance quickly.

The scheduling of maintenance can impact the bottom line in positive way maintenance makes machines more reliable and enable them to deliver more performance.

4. Don't Use the Pen and Paper Method

Using the pen and paper method can be useful for small size organizations. But when your organizations start growing its accuracy starts compromising and its impact is seen on the result.

As small organizations have fewer work orders compared to large organizations. Pen and paper practice is prone to error & data maintained in papers is not effective, so data is not reliable.

If you make decisions based on the this collected this decision will be as productive as you thought.

5. Categorize Equipment

If you want to improve your maintenance work then you must categorize machines and assets. Categorizing assets allows technicians to know which category equipment falls into! It is crucial or not!

You can put machines, pieces of equipment, and assets into three categories.

• High Priority - Those assets are essential for daily operation and without them, business loss can occur. Those types of assets can have high priority.
• Medium Priority - Those assets are important and if they are not available then productivity will suffer but not as much.
• Low Priority - Those assets which are less essential, and work can be done without them these assets fall into the low priority asset category.

When you categorize assets maintenance team will know which assets need to be repaired quickly & which assets can be delivered later.

What Is the Work Order Process?

The work order process has various stages as we have discussed below:

1. Work Order Creation

The first step in the work order process is the creation of a work order. In this stage asset that needs maintenance is found and the work order is created

2. Scheduling & Assigning

In this stage, scheduling is done of the work order as per the priority and work order assignment is done. A checklist is created for the activities that need to be done in the work order.

Depending on the priority and activities that need to be done work order is assigned to the technician.

3. Execution

After assigning work orders the automated software alerts the team about the work order allocation and alerts schedule maintenance for a work order. Then technician starts working on the machine and performs the activities as per the checklist.

4. Report

After all work done report is created by the technician in which he mentioned the status and remarks about the machine. Also mentions how much time is taken in the work order. These types of reports are helpful in the future to deliver more productive work in less time.

Conclusion

Implementing CMMS will assist you in all your problems and easily overcome them with the help of maintenance management software. It is the best practice & it shall be the first step when you want to manage work orders efficiently.

This software aids in all aspects of the work order. If you are having issues in maintenance management then CMMS software can be very helpful to your organization.

You will start noticing its impact from the beginning. It has the potential to help your business. You can grow your business with the help of this software.

Also Read: What Are the Benefits of Asset Monitoring Software in an Organization?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What are the benefits of CMMS Software?‍

The benefits of CMMS software are given below:
1. Maintenance tracking
2. Asset history
3. Automated work order process
4. Accurate Data that helps in making business decisions
5. Reports and statistics

2. Does CMMS software use cloud-based technology?‍

CMMS software uses cloud-based technology. It means that it gives you more flexibility to work when you are away from your office. You can access data from anywhere with your smartphone.

With cloud technology, you are not bounded to your seat you can access data from anywhere and change it as per the requirement.

3. What is the information mentioned in a work order?‍

1. Work order assigned to whom
2. Activities that need to be done
3. Work order priority
4. Description of the problem
5. Timeline for work order task completion
These are a few of the bullet points mentioned in each work order.