What Are the Best Practices for Work Order Management Systems?

Field Service

Last updated Nov 2, 2023 at 7:22PM | Published on Apr 22, 2021 | Field Service

Work order management is essential for modern organizations. It enhances coordination between the various departments to boost efficiency and ensure sustainability. Nonetheless, it is a challenge that requires careful evaluation and planning.

Uncoordinated work management can be harmful to the organization’s output and productivity. Here’s how you can optimize efficiency by applying the best practices in work order management.

What Is a Work Order?

A work order is an essential tool of communication that records tasks the company needs to track. It provides data on the productivity of your staff and ensures they complete tasks on time and on budget.

By eliminating workflow issues, it reduces the risk of equipment downtime. Statistics indicate, implementing scheduling software boosts productivity by 28%.

Principal Aspects of a Work Order

A work order record has principal parts such as the name of the maintenance technician and the project’s timeline.

Some of the components of a work order management software system may include:

  • Names of personnel requesting or approving work
  • The timeline that defines the maintenance period
  • Steps or a checklist needed to complete the tasks
  • Safety guidelines when working on maintenance tasks
  • Designate priority to assignments based on the organization’s policies

Developing Work Order Management Requests

The first process in using facility management software is to create requests. For best practices, the organization should require that all orders be submitted formally. That would ensure that all submissions have the relevant information necessary for the task.

However, organizations can vary their rules depending on the company’s workflow and policies. For example, a manager can approve and override the work order management system.

Approving Work Order Requests

The objective of the approval stage is to avoid clogging the system with incomplete requests. That means approvers have to ensure that the records have adequate information. It may be necessary to have staff whose task is to check submissions before forwarding them to the maintenance team.

In turn, the maintenance team will approve or reject the order. The managers may determine that a request is no longer viable despite having all the information. In some instances, it may be better to replace the equipment to uphold efficiency.

Best Practices in Enforcing Priority Guidelines

Prioritization is one of the principal challenges of implementing work order management in the organization. One of the best practices for prioritization is to come up with codes and guidelines to implement tasks. For example, an ‘urgent’ code can indicate that staff should stop what they are doing and attend to the emergency. Other codes may include high, medium, and low priority.

If you’re in need of word order management software, Fieldpoint has you covered. For more information about our work order management services, schedule a demo or contact us today.