How to Build a Better Work Order Process

Work Orders are the backbone of a business.  They are used to assign work to various areas and check on the progress of that work, and that there is sufficient resource available to carry out the work.  Without Work Orders, a company might never know what is required, what is started, or when work is completed.

Work orders are a fairly simple process that operate as a loop to ensure that work is logged, work is assigned, work is completed, and, finally, the work order is closed.  This type of system, altered to fit a maintenance program, can be shown diagrammatically as below:

Typical Work Order System.

The sum parts of the process work together to create a system that is complete and easy to track.  There is no part where the process cannot be tracked and it is easy to determine where a particular action is at any one time.  Both of those elements are essential to progressing a work order, and will form part of the company cashflow calculations as much as they are e required part of any internationally-recognised Quality system that you may be running.

We cannot exist without work orders, but can we make them any better?

We can always make things better, but the key to doing so is to do it in such a way that it makes us work smarter rather than faster.  Many companies will find that their work order process, while something that works, might actually be something that they can update with little work to be a whole lot more.  Work orders must follow a series of rules to be effective in the first place, including;

• Contain the correct information. If a work order has either misleading or incorrect information attached, then the person carrying out the task has little hope of getting it right. Consider a maintenance work order that askes for a certain machine to be serviced, but points towards a different machine, then you not only apply expensive maintenance to the wrong machine, but the right one doesn’t get fixed.  Make sure that your information is right.

• Always use a work order. If you can’t track it, you cannot be assured that the work has been done.  There is no excuse to go ‘off piste’ when handling something as important as maintenance work, so make sure that there is a work order logged, regardless of the size of the work.

• Prioritize work orders. You can’t do everything at once, so you need to determine when you can do things, and create a hierarchy of required work with expected timescales. In order to keep your priorities in line, you’ll need to create a set of standards that ensure consistency. For example, if a request was made that involves site or personnel safety, you’ll want to assign that the highest priority. Routine maintenance requests, on the other hand, may not need to be addressed right away. Keep in mind that most clients/stakeholders will want every request to be a high priority, so having your own system in place will help you address truly urgent needs faster.

So, given that we have to use work orders, while needing to have them complete, trackable, and carried out in a specific order.  Sounds like a tall order, and it normally would be if you tried to do it without some governing system, but this is where CMMS can make all the difference.

CMMS is the ideal method of collecting, monitoring, following progress, and closing out work orders.  In addition, CMMS will allow you to assign resource – both people and stock – to the work order, and can be used to create statistical analysis of the many aspects of maintenance such as time to complete, effectiveness, and overall cost, as well as identifying where your effort is being focused.

It’s not easy to have every single minute of work documented in a work order, but a CMMS will help you get as close to possible to this goal. The important thing is to choose a system that is technician-friendly, making it simple for workers to document orders on the job and keep your work order process up-to-date.

Talk to UpKeep about installing a CMMS system, and start getting the most out of your maintenance and work order system.