It might seem like a never-ending fight when maintenance requests aren't managed, equipment breaks down unexpectedly, and repair costs keep rising.
How you organize and manage your work is frequently the basic, yet often ignored, cause of this mess.
A highly designed system for processing diverse work order types is the cornerstone of an effective and proactive maintenance department.
It changes reactive firefighting into a smooth, data-driven business.
This article gives you a useful way to analyze, sort, and handle the many kinds of work orders.
We'll talk about what a work order is, the most frequent types of work orders, and the best ways to improve the way you handle all of your work orders.
What does a work order mean?
A work order is a formal piece of paper that gives permission for a job to be done, such as maintenance, repair, or installation.
It contains all the important details needed to do the work, such as what has to be done, who is in charge, whose asset is impacted, and what resources are needed.
You might say that it's the official command center for all maintenance work.
Not only is properly classifying work orders an administrative task, it's also a strategic need.
When you put labor into the right groups, you get a lot of useful benefits:
- Better Prioritization: Teams can quickly tell the difference between a normal check and a major failure, which helps them use their resources better.
- Accurate Data and Reporting: Clean data lets you keep track of important numbers like Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), scheduled vs. unexpected work, and maintenance backlogs.
- Better Budgeting: Knowing how much preventative, corrective, and emergency work you have to do helps you better predict the expenses of labor, materials, and contractors.
- Better Resource Planning: You can confidently schedule technicians and order components, which cuts down on downtime and wasted time.
Types of Work Orders (Overview)
Every business has its own demands, but most maintenance jobs can be put into a few basic groups.
The first step in making your processes more consistent is to understand these various sorts of work orders.
Let's look at the ones that happen the most.
Preventive Maintenance Work Order
A preventative maintenance work order is made to do regular, planned operations that will keep equipment from breaking down.
These proactive tasks are the most important part of a good maintenance program.
They are planned ahead of time based on how often they are used (for example, every 1,000 hours of operation) or how long they are used (for example, every month).
For example, every month on the first, a work order is automatically made to oil the bearings on a conveyor system.
Goal: Cut down on unnecessary downtime and make assets last longer.
Work Order for Correction or Reaction
A corrective work order, which is sometimes called a reactive work order, is made to remedy equipment that has already broken down or is not working as well as it should.
While some corrective work is unavoidable, a high volume of it often points to an ineffective preventive maintenance strategy.
For example, A technician finds a leaking pump while doing a normal walk-through and creates a work order to fix the seal.
Goal: Get an asset back to the way it normally works.
Order of Emergency Work
An emergency work order is a high-priority form of corrective work that must be done promptly to avert safety dangers, large production losses, or serious asset damage.
These jobs take priority above all other planned work and need everyone to pitch in.
Example: A critical production line suddenly stops due to a motor failure, halting all operations.
Goal: Fix an urgent failure to keep people, property, and production safe.
Work Order for Predictive Maintenance
Condition monitoring technology sends data that starts a predictive maintenance work order.
Instead of relying on a fixed schedule, this approach uses sensors and analytics to predict when a failure is likely to occur.
This lets teams do maintenance at the best time, right before the asset breaks down.
For example, Vibration sensors on a fan may find an issue and instantly create a maintenance order to look into the imbalance before it causes a major failure.
Goal: Maximize asset uptime and minimize maintenance costs by acting on real-time condition data.
Order for Service or Contractor Work
You may ask for and keep track of work done by outside suppliers or contractors using a service work order.
These are necessary for specialized work, warranty work, or when your in-house team doesn't have the time or knowledge to do it.
A service work order should make it clear what needs to be done, how much it will cost, and how long it will take.
For example, making a service order for a licensed HVAC technician to check and fix the cooling towers at the facility once a year.
Goal: To keep track of and officially record work given to outside service providers.
Order for Inspection or Audit Work
To check on the condition of an asset, inspection work orders are made.
Unlike preventative maintenance, they don’t often require executing a repair or replacement.
The idea is to get information instead.
The results from an inspection often lead to the issuance of a corrective or preventative work order.
For instance, A work order is made for a technician to inspect all of the fire extinguishers for safety once a week.
Goal: To examine asset status and identify any concerns or compliance gaps.
How to Choose the Right Work Order Type
Make a simple decision-making framework for your team to make sure things stay the same. Here's a flow you may follow step by step:
- Is the job urgent and putting safety or productivity at risk right away?
Yes, you should use an Emergency Work Order. Stop what you're doing and deal with it right now. - Is the task being done on a fixed schedule (time or use) to avoid a failure from happening in the future?
Yes: Use a Preventive Maintenance Work Order. - Is the work based on real-time data from sensors that monitor conditions?
Yes: Use a work order for predictive maintenance. - Is the asset already broken, not working well, or in need of repair?
Yes: Use a Corrective Work Order. - Is an external vendor or contractor required to perform the work?
Yes: Use a Service Work Order. - Is the main purpose only to inspect, evaluate, or audit the state of an asset?
Yes, you should use an Inspection Work Order.
Best Ways to Handle Work Orders
Standardizing the kinds of work orders you use is just the first step. To really get the most out of your maintenance work, follow these best practices:
- Standardize Templates: Create a unique template for each work order type in your CMMS software. Add custom fields that are important to that job, like downtime cause codes for fixing things and sensor readings for predicting things.
- Set Priority Levels: Set clear levels of priority (for example, Low, Medium, High, and Urgent) and explain what each level means.
- Automate Workflows: Use your CMMS to automatically create work orders for maintenance that is planned or that needs to be done. This eliminates manual labor and guarantees duties are never missed.
- Capture Rich Data: Teach your staff how to fill out work orders all the way. For good work order asset management, it's important to have information like how much time was spent, what components were utilized, and failure analysis codes.
- Review and Analyze: Regularly review work order data to identify trends. A rising number of emergency work orders on a specific asset might indicate a need for a better PM plan.
How Makula CMMS Can Help
The engine behind modern work order management is a powerful CMMS. Makula CMMS is intended to help you apply these best practices with simplicity.
You can do the following with Makula:
- Change the types of work orders: You may quickly create and set up various work order categories with their own fields and templates.
- Set up PM Scheduling to run on its own: Set up routines for preventative maintenance that are based on time and consumption, and automatically generate work orders.
- Connect with sensors: Connect condition monitoring tools to trigger predictive maintenance work orders based on real-time asset data.
- Streamline Contractor Management: Issue and monitor service work orders for external suppliers, all inside a single platform.
- Gain Powerful Insights: Use our dashboard and reporting tools to examine work order data, measure KPIs, and make educated choices to increase dependability.
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