What is a work order?
A work order acts as a written or electronic record to assign and track maintenance tasks for a specific asset. They can originate from:
Work requests
- Ad hoc needs.
- Follow-ups to inspections or audits.
- Preventive maintenance schedules.
Work Order components
There are a few basic things each work order should include:
- Who initiated the work order.
- Which equipment, locations, or areas need attention.
- Details of the needed or requested work.
- Assignment of the technician to complete the work.
- A deadline for completion.
What is work order software?
Work order software manages the entire lifecycle of work requests and work orders, from initiation to closure. Work order software, sometimes referred to as a work order management system, allows users to create, plan, schedule, and dispatch work orders. It also allows users to schedule maintenance tasks and record history on repairs completed. Modern computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) integrate work order management software.
In the past, technicians received work orders manually written on paper. This paper-based process hampered work order tracking, particularly when determining completion status. Additionally, tracking work order history for reports proved cumbersome, and susceptible to inadvertent data modification without an audit trail.
What’s the typical lifecycle of a work order?
The Work Order Process
- After identifying the needed work, use the work order software to create a work request to notify the maintenance department.
- Judge the urgency of the request and assign it a priority level (low, medium, or high).
- Upon conversion to a formal work order, the maintenance planner has the authority to adjust the priority if necessary, considering the department's workload and overall needs. This revised priority then enters into the work order schedule.
- Depending on the situation, bypass the work request and create a work order directly for more efficiency. The software can accommodate both methods.
Planning
Once the team reviews and approves the request, they turn it into a work order, initiating the repair planning process. Users can add parts to the work order using work order management software, ensuring they have the parts available when they complete the repairs, thereby decreasing downtime. Users can also provide an estimate of how long the repairs will take to complete, as well as who will do the work (specific employees, shift, crew, or craft). Planning labor ensures that enough people are available to complete repairs as efficiently as possible. From there, the team can schedule the work order. Proper planning takes effort, but it also saves money.
Scheduling
Many software programs let users assign it to a specific technician, craft, crew, or shift. Scheduling work orders directly ensures:
- The right number of employees for the job.
- More efficient completion of work orders.
- The technicians have the correct workload.
Closing the work order
After completing repairs, workers can add comments to the work order explaining exactly what they did. This information helps with future planning and scheduling. Additionally, workers can log the actual labor spent, allowing for more efficient resource allocation.
Good work order management software empowers users to:
- Check off steps or tasks on a checklist as they complete them.
- Answer a series of questions about the repairs directly within the software.
Users can review, report on, and use this data, along with the asset's repair history, for business intelligence analysis within the software.
MAPCON work order software enables you to plan and execute preventive maintenance tasks with its wide range of features and options. Want to see it for yourself? Click the button below to get your FREE 30-day trial of MAPCON!
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Ready to find a work order software system that fits your company? Follow the following tips for success. How do you do that?
- Assemble a team. Different departments have unique needs. Involve at least one person from each department who will use the system. Consider everyone's needs to choose the correct features.
- Define Your Goals: Before selecting a system, clearly outline the goals and desired outcomes you hope to achieve with its implementation.
- Prioritize Features: Once the team has its goals, it should decide on the essential software features. Judge the necessity or the convenience of each.
- Start researching work order software vendors. Many companies, like Mapcon Technologies, Inc., offer free software trials as well as free demonstrations.
- Consider training options. Software is ever-changing and evolving, so it is important that a work order software vendor offers ongoing training options.
- Make the decision. After considering all vendors, meet with the team that you formed. Go over the pros and cons of each work order program and decide which solution fits your company best.
How do you set up work order software?
Step 1: Create Users
Create the users and provide them with a login and password for the work order software program.
Step 2: Setup Security
Larger companies can leverage security levels to control employee access. This system assigns a level to individual employees or groups.
- Grants access: Employees have access to the specific areas they need to perform their jobs.
- Limit access: This system also prevents unauthorized access to more sensitive administrative areas.
Here's how it works:
- Lower access level: Employees with a lower level can create or close work orders. However, they can only view equipment details, manuals, and parts lists (read-only access).
- Higher access level: Users with higher levels can make changes to equipment details, manuals, and parts lists when necessary.
Step 3: Track Equipment Effectively
Work order creation involves specifying a target entity: equipment, location, or cost center.
- Assign a unique ID to each piece of equipment.
- Establish Equipment Hierarchy. Set up equipment in a hierarchical structure, where costs associated with "child" equipment automatically roll up to the overall cost of their "parent" equipment. Start with a smaller list of critical equipment and expand from there.
Step 4: Identify Locations
The next step involves taking the cost centers and adding them to the equipment and locations, allowing costs to accumulate for each entity. This process ensures that the team writes work orders for the equipment or location itself, creating a proper history in the work order software program, while still allowing labor and material charges to accumulate into the proper cost center account.
Step 5: Manage Cost Centers
In some cases, the work order directly charges a specific budget. Use a cost center or general ledger number for this. Consult the accounting department for a list of these.
Integrate cost centers with equipment and locations so costs accumulate on each entity.
Benefits
- This approach directly links work orders to the specific equipment or location for proper tracking within the software program.
- Labor and material charges accurately accrue in the appropriate cost center accounts.