Is your business still managing your maintenance work order process using pen and paper or spreadsheets? If so, you may need to consider how this process could be wasting time and money.
Efficient management of the maintenance work order process can benefit your business. Here’s how.
Table of Contents
What are Maintenance Work Orders?
A maintenance work order contains information and details that allow maintenance workers to complete their jobs safely, efficiently, and without errors. Maintenance work orders help facilities be better organized and improve labor and cost efficiency.
General Details
The maintenance work order contains information about the maintenance type and the knowledge required to complete the task. For example, if an HVAC unit needs to be repaired or inspected, you need someone on your maintenance team with HVAC knowledge to do the task.
The maintenance work order reflects who was assigned, the priority of the job, and the estimated hours to complete the job.
Where the Maintenance Work is to be Done
This portion of the maintenance work order reflects where the work is to be done. For example, the location details on repairing or inspecting the HVAC unit would include the building, floor, room, and unit to be repaired or inspected.
Details and Information
Here you would record what equipment category the HVAC repair falls under; the equipment types to be repaired or inspected (such as a furnace or air conditioner); the make, model, and manufacturer of the equipment to be repaired or inspected; the serial number; and, if one was assigned, the asset identification number.
Work Order Descriptions
This section lists documents needed to fix the HVAC unit safely and efficiently. Examples of documents include lock-out procedures, manuals, schematics, parts lists and other information that will help expedite safety and efficiency. Once the appropriate documents are listed, they must be collected and packaged with the maintenance work order.
Maintenance Work Completion Summary and Details
This section will contain what was done to complete the task, who completed it, and what date it was completed. This section will also detail the cost and materials used to complete the task and how many hours it took. Any helpful notes should be documented. An approval signature from the maintenance supervisor is applied to this section.
Add Labor and Cost Efficiency to Your Business by Using Maintenance Work Orders
Generating a maintenance work order provides organization to your maintenance efforts and simultaneously tracks costs and hours spent performing maintenance tasks. Your business will benefit if you expedite maintenance tasks, eliminate excessive downtime, and monitor the costs it takes to complete the tasks by using maintenance work orders.
Save Time and Money by Automating Your Maintenance Work Orders
If you’re already using maintenance work orders, then you’re on your way to increasing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your business. But if your maintenance work order process is still done manually using paper or spreadsheets, you may want to consider automating the process.
Automating maintenance work orders will allow you to automatically generate plant maintenance forms, automatically generate notifications, automatically obtain the parts needed, and automatically collect and generate supporting documents to be packaged with the maintenance work order. Automating maintenance work orders will provide even more efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and minimal equipment downtime for your business.