Work Order Tracking

Automatic work order tracking is one of the most poignant features of any computerized maintenance management system. Other modules such as bar coding or predictive maintenance may exist in some CMMS software vendors’ tool belt, but not others. A common thread between all vendors, however, is work order tracking software. Work order management (both demand and scheduled) is thus the hub of a CMMS system.

Work order automation and maintenance

As referenced in an article by Software Advice, automatic work order tracking improves communication. When assets need repairs, users create work orders—either from a desktop computer or mobile device—that are instantly placed in the system. This stands in stark contrast to manual methods, which require workers to fill out paper forms and submit work orders by hand.

Being able to automatically input work orders into a centralized system that tracks progress and manages various priority levels reduces the risk of mis-handled paper based work orders, increases work order transparency, and more clearly defines the jobs assigned to each member of the maintenance department. As the article  mentions, Hippo work order software uses its Calendar Dashboard as one way to display the work orders- including current status- assigned to each maintenance tech in a simple monthly, weekly, or daily planner view. The Calendar Dash plays an important role in workflow planning and job scheduling for workers. This increased workflow efficiency aids in a more optimized schedule, reducing downtime between jobs and- by recognizing the work hours in a week and the estimated number of hours to complete a given project- it ensures that as many jobs are slotted in as possible.

work order tracking software

Hippo’s Calendar Dashboard is the perfect work order tracking software

Benefits of CMMS for work orders

In addition to improving cross-departmental and internal maintenance department communication, work order management is at the root of a CMMS process. Creating an electronic work order pulls information from various other CMMS features in the system, tying the information to each work order. Info categories that you can associate with a work order include resources, vendors, equipment/assets, facility locations, documents / images, and much more. For example, you can assign an internal maintenance employee to any work order. From there, automatic work order tracking allows this information to be individually measured and when cumulated over a designated time period, it can be reported on to find data patterns and make informed decisions on a variety of maintenance activities. By assigning a work order to an employee, their performance data is tracked in the system and can ultimately be reported on. In Hippo, HR reports can relay an individual’s total labor hours, total labor costs, and can show how often the resource adhered to work order deadlines. These powerful statistics all stem from the creation of a simple work order.

 

Improve ROI with work order automation

Any feature that helps to increase the up-time of your equipment/ assets is fundamental to a robust maintenance management system.

Scheduled work order management  (AKA preventive maintenance) is just the ticket. By creating scheduled work orders to either generate on a calendar based or meter based frequency, a proactive approach to maintenance repair can be had. It is estimated that preventive maintenance increases your equipment up-time by 20%, and in industries relying on these assets, 20% can become a significant competitive advantage. In addition, the same article by Software Advice explains that modern work order tracking can help increase machine up-time by adding multiple levels of accountability, customizable notifications, and automatically submitted requests. In all of these cases automation has increased the access that multiple stakeholders have to work orders, viewing them from one centralized system.  


Thanks to Software Advice, we’ve included their free downtime calculator where you can plug in your own estimates to help determine the average cost of your machine downtime per hour. 

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CALCULATOR


Summary

Automated work order management is the hub of any CMMS software. It is the foundation from which most CMMS processes stem, and forms the basis for all in-depth maintenance reporting. Without work order management, there would be no connecting link between your maintenance data housed in your database and the ability to interact with it. Understanding the full benefits of work order management and how it works in your CMMS is an important step to optimize this feature. For more information on work order management and scheduled work orders, contact a Hippo CMMS Software Specialist  or leave a comment below. We’d love to coach you through this important feature!

Happy work order-ing!

About The Author

Jonathan Davis

Jonathan has been covering asset management, maintenance software, and SaaS solutions since joining Hippo CMMS. Prior to that, he wrote for textbooks and video games.
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