Work orders key to tracking maintenance jobs

The process of creating tasks to schedule preventive maintenance activities was covered in our previous column (see MRO Dec. 2003, p. 35 or online at www.mro-esource.com). Once you understand how to build preventive maintenance tasks, you can move into the next phase of the CMMS implementation, which is the automatic generation of work orders using your software. This gives you the ability to print work orders and to track the completion of the work.

Work order creation is one of the key functions of the CMMS software. It provides the opportunity to organize your work schedule and to adequately prepare for upcoming maintenance activities.

There are two distinct ways in which work orders are created within the CMMS. First there are the automatic work orders that are generated based on the schedule and next due date set up in the PM tasks.

The CMMS work order generation process allows you to choose a date range that examines each PM task and generates work orders for the ones that fall into the time period you’ve chosen. If you generate them on a weekly basis, the PMs that are due during the week will automatically create a work order.

I usually recommend that the generation process be done at least a week in advance. This allows planning of labour and resources. Many companies generate work orders on Thursday or Friday for work that will need to be planned for the following week. This doesn’t give a lot of time, however if you have implemented a good inventory system, then the parts needed should be on hand. Of course, you should always allocate labour hours to weekly preventive maintenance work.

Besides the work orders that are generated, there will be manually created work orders that need to be produced to track maintenance activities throughout the facility. There are many reasons to create manual work orders; here are a few:

1. Follow-up work orders from preventive maintenance. During PMs, maintenance personnel will find other repairs that need to be done that can’t be completed at the time. In this case they’ll create a work order to schedule the repair at a later date.

2. Reported problems. Supervisors, operators, the quality department, etc., will report or request repairs that they have noticed are required. Many organizations use a paper system to report maintenance problems or work requests. Every day, the maintenance department sorts through the stack of requests and decides what needs to be done. This stack of paper can grow and grow to become an enormous beast that spreads out over the top of your desk. Requests get lost, forgotten, or become so old that no one remembers who or where the problem came from.

Here’s where your CMMS comes in. Take the work requests and enter them into the work order system on the computer. Even better, if your CMMS has a Work Request module, enter the requests there. I’ll talk more about the work request system in the next issue. You now have a record of the problem, the date it was requested and the person who asked for the work to be done.

3. Scheduled shutdown work. There will always be work that will take place during plant shutdowns. Sometimes the down period may be months away and the list of things to do continues to grow. Here again the CMMS software can be optimized. Work orders can be created with the scheduled start and finish date the same as the shutdown. Parts can be obtained and labour can be assigned in advance so you’re ready when the time comes.

4. Projects. Projects and modifications to the equipment and processes keep the plant up-to-date and running more efficiently. Projects can vary in length but are all equally important to complete, especially to the person who asked for them. Creating work orders will allow you to keep track of the progress of the project as well as its related labour and material costs.

Some projects take weeks — even months — to complete. Regularly updating the work order with labour and materials used will allow you to see if you’re on schedule for completion and within the budgeted cost.

5. Contractor work orders. Contractors are commonly used at many facilities. They can be working during plant shutdowns, on projects, or maintaining equipment under service contracts. You will want to create work orders to schedule and capture the work performed.

6. Regulator or audit inspections. Almost every industry is regulated or inspected by some outside source of authority. There may be customer audits, government inspections or quality audits, to name a few. These activities generally result in some work that needs to be done to comply with a regulation and must be completed within a prescribed time period. Your CMMS provides the tools to schedule the work, record the results and create the necessary paper trail and documentation to satisfy the inspecting bodies.

All of these examples of work order types can be given a scheduled start and finish date, and can have parts procured and labour assigned. Once they are planned, the work orders can be handed out to the maintenance personnel for completion.

The work order form will have space for maintenance personnel to write down who did the work, the number of hours spent on the job, the parts used and any comments about the work they performed.

Once completed, the work order can be updated in the CMMS and closed out of the system. When the work order is closed, your CMMS will automatically update inventory stock levels and add the cost of the work to the overall cost of maintaining the equipment.

By now you have realized that there can be a lot of work orders in the system. It will take some dedication to keep track of them all, especially if you work in a large facility. The work order function of the CMMS is an important tool and can help you manage the workflow by showing you what needs to be done. It gives you historical data on your equipment that you can use to troubleshoot problems, establish critical spare parts inventory and calculate costs to determine when it is time to replace equipment.

Don’t let the number of work orders overwhelm you, though. Next issue, we’ll show you how to keep on top of them. We’ll talk about managing the growing number of work orders in your CMMS. It can easily get out of hand unless you use the functionality of your CMMS.

Peter Phillips of Trailwalk Holdings, a CMMS consulting and training company, can be reached at 902-798-3601 or by e-mail at peter@trailwalk.ca.