Create Work Order – A summary of the activity

A work order is a document, which contains the information to carry out maintenance activities on equipment or a location and records the information of the actual work done.

A work order can be created manually or can be automatically generated in the following circumstances:

Work Request

It is a document that is used to report and register a request for maintenance by an employee, encountering a specific problem on the equipment. A work order is raised based on the request to initiate appropriate action for the restoration of the faulty equipment.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance can be defined as the act of keeping equipment or a location in satisfactory condition through systematic inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures before they occur or before they develop into major defects. Work orders are generated when preventive maintenance is carried out on equipment and location.

Inspection Order

An inspection order is a document that is used for recording the details of inspection that is carried out on equipment or a location. Work orders are also created with reference to the inspection order for carrying out additional tasks as a part of the inspection.

Maintenance Plan

Maintenance planning involves planning the shut down activities of a plant or a part of the plant. It requires carrying out tasks on various equipment or location for a project. Work orders are created for carrying out activities as per the maintenance plan.

Calibration Order

Calibration can be defined as the act of maintaining measuring equipment in satisfactory working order. Minor adjustments are made to the equipment to rectify the deviations, if any Calibration orders are created for calibration purposes. Work orders are created with reference to the calibration order for carrying out additional tasks as a part of the calibration.

Work Log

It is a document that is used for reporting problems on the equipment, based on which action is to be taken by the maintenance planner. The planner can create a work request or a work order based on the information recorded in the work log.

However, work orders can also be created directly. This activity allows you to create work orders for initiating the maintenance job on equipment or location.

A work order is created by indicating the various tasks to be performed in order to rectify the problem and by specifying the parts and resources that are required to execute the same. Many times, when carrying out a work order on equipment, maintenance work may also be carried out on dependent equipment. Such work orders that are raised on the dependant equipment is referred to as sub work orders and the original work order is referred to as the parent work order. This hierarchical relationship facilitates the tracking of work orders belonging to the original work order.

Once a work order is created, it will go through the planning and execution stage, ending with the closure of the work order to complete the cycle.

The work order cycle broadly consists of 4 stages viz. creation, authorization, planning and execution.

• The creation stage essentially comprises the generation of a work order either manually or automatically. The creation phase of a work order includes identification of the problems that have occurred on the equipment, the tasks to be performed and the spare part and resources that are required for executing the work order.

• If the work order requires authorization, then it has to be authorized in the authorization stage, before it enters the planning stage. It is decided in the Work Flow whether a work order must be approved or not. If authorization is set as “Not Required”, the work order need not be authorized. You need to specify the user name if authoization is set as “Required” in Work Flow. If the authorization process is to be decided by the Work Flow, the system passes certain parameters to the Work Flow configuration. The parameters that are passed are the work order number, equipment or location on which the work order is raised, the type, category, priority of work order, the total estimated cost of the work order, the planning group of the work order and the employee ID of the user who created the work order. Based on the rules defined in Work Flow for these parameters, the Work Flow decides the authorization process.

• The planning phase consists of scheduling the work order taking into consideration the availability of spare parts and resources to execute the work order and also feedback from production on equipment availability.

• In the execution stage, the actual hours spent by the employees, the resources that are utilised, the actual duration of the work order/task and the number of hours the equipment was down are entered into the system. When the work order is closed, the actual details entered for the work order get posted to the equipment history for future review/analysis.

The following diagram depicts the various steps in work order creation before it is scheduled:

    Figure   Work order creation

Getting familiar with the pages inside

What you can do in this activity

Create a work order

Specify the labor requirements.

Specify the spare part requirements.

Specify the tools requirements.

Specify the service requirements

Specify the cost details of the work order

Define problems while raising work order

Specify the reference documents

Specify secondary equipment and locations

Specify the details of stock deliverables.

Create a work order

A work order is a document, which contains the information to carry out maintenance activities on equipment or a location and records the actual information of the work done.

• Use the “Create Work Order” page to create the work order.

Specify the labor requirements.

You can specify the details of labor that is required for carrying out the work order.

• Use the “WO – Skill Requirement” page to specify the labor requirements for the work order.

Specify the spare part requirements.

You can specify the details of spare parts that are required for carrying out the work order.

• Use the “WO – Spare Parts Requirement” page to specify the spare parts.

Specify the tools requirements.

You can specify the details of tools that are required for carrying out the work order.

• Use the “WO – Tool Requirement” page to specify the spare parts.

Specify the service requirements

You can specify the details of service that is required for carrying out the work order.

• Use the “WO Service Requirements” page to specify the service requirements.

Specify the cost details of the work order

You can specify the cost details of the work order.

• Use the “WO – Cost” page to specify the details of work order cost.

Define problems while raising work order

You can specify the various problems for which the work order is raised.

• Use the “WO – Problems” page to specify the problems for which the work order is raised.

Specify the reference documents

You can specify the reference documents based on which the work order is created.

• Use the “WO – References” page to specify the reference documents.

Specify secondary equipment and locations

You can specify the other equipment or locations on which work must be performed as a part of the work order.

• Use the “WO – Secondary Equipment/Locations” page to specify the secondary equipment and locations.

Specify the details of stock deliverables.

You can specify the detials of stock deliverables to be returned to the inventory.

• Use the “WO – Stock Deliverables” page to specify the details of stock deliverables.