4 Effective Work Order Management Practices for your Organization

Work orders are important to keep track of maintenance activities. However, most of the times it is ignored and nobody notices the importance of work order. When it is managed manually you will have a lot of papers. We all know papers are not easy to manage, can be lost easily and after few months they start decaying and liquefies.  

According to the maintenance study in 2018, 44 percent of organizations still relies on pen and paper for tracking maintenance. A long time before there was no option than papers for tracking but now this is the era of digitalization. 

What is the work order management?

The art of managing work orders efficiently is known as work order management. Scheduling of work as per the requirement. Quite simple, right? Actually, it is much more complex. 

For effective work order management software are utilized such as computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) or enterprise asset management (EAM) & Asset management software (AMS).

According to Statista,

“Revenue generated from the task management software market worldwide in 2018 and 2023. The market is expected to grow in the coming years at a compound annual growth rate of 13.7 percent, eventually reaching an annual revenue of 4.33 billion U.S. dollars by 2023.”

Manual management of work order can be hectic and prone to mistake as there will be lots of factors that need to be considered such as:

• Scheduling jobs & activities
• Task priority
• Date of last maintenance done 
• Current issue 
• Resource available including employees and inventory

Managing work orders with software can make a difference. 

What are the best practices for work order management?

Below we have mentioned few best work order management practices:

1. Proper documentation for each work order process –

One of the most important practices that should be strictly followed that proper documentation shall be done. Without documentation no work order shall be entertained. 

There is a valid reason behind it, if no documentation is done then there will no proper tracking of maintenance and no one will know what activities are done. Hence, it is not a good practice at all. 

Thus, no small task shall be done without proper documentation. Sometimes this process may seem like “unwanted” but in the long run, it will be effective.

• Priority-based work order scheduling –

The scheduling of work order shall be done on a priority basis. Effectively organizing your work orders is a vital precept of system effectiveness. This is the reason it’s essential to utilize a standardized set of prioritization rules that prompts consistency all through the procedure.

Everyone wants their word order request has high priority. But there are rules and regulations which need to be followed as their several criteria about deciding priority. When a requestor fills request there are certain keywords are used by requestor through which work order priority is decided.

• Invest in a work order software –

When software is utilized to manage work order the process of organization is simplified. The software reduces the hectic work of technicians and manager. 

The software has notification features that can be helpful to everyone. How? Whenever a new work order request arrives the maintenance team will be notified and whenever actions are taken in the work order such as any activity is done then the customer is notified. If any work order is pending or not any actions are taken then also maintenance team is notified. When a task is assigned to a technician then also technician is notified about the same.

Reports, statistics and other details can also be acquired with this software. Usually, managers make a decision based on assumption but these reports are helpful in the decision-making process by facts and numbers.

• Take mobile advantage – 

Work order status can be seen by customers and manager and what are activities completed, yet to completed status can be seen via mobile. 

Without mobile technology, when work is done technicians need to go back to the computer to update the status. But now for better customer satisfaction technician insert pictures and video of maintenance work done.

Otherwise, managers and technicians were bounded to their work station. Mobile for work order management can work like a breeze in your organization favour.

Managers can set priority when they are not even in the offices. They can also update information on the go. Mobile streamlines the process and takes it to another level.

Conclusion – Work order is essential for several departments specifically maintenance and manufacturing. They are useful in organizing work orders. When you use asset management software for increasing efficiency and productivity, it comes really handy!  It gives straightforward approaches to trigger significant activities, for example, decreasing asset downtime, supporting and oversee information. Moreover, it allows teams to communicate with each other about work orders.