Work Order

A technician receives a request to repair a machine, and without a clear record it may be hard to know who approved the work, which parts were used or whether the machine is safe to run. A work order gives the job a trackable identity.

Start with the problem or required output, writing a specific description rather than a label such as repair, and include the asset, location and symptoms where relevant. Record the requester's details and priority, since an urgent safety fault differs from a cosmetic issue and priority rules should follow the company's own risk and service commitments.

Set the scope: a production work order may identify quantity and specification, while a maintenance work order may specify inspection, repair steps and acceptance checks. Plan labour, materials, tools and outside services, noting that IBM's Maximo documentation describes work orders with those resource categories and that fields differ across systems.

Assign the right team or person, because skills, access and availability affect the schedule and a work order is not proof that the assigned worker is qualified for regulated tasks. Check dependencies before starting, since required parts, permits, lockout procedures or customer access may be missing and planning should reveal them early rather than create a stalled job.

Decide who approves the scope, because some systems hold an order pending approval and permit tasks to begin only after approval, while local policy defines who can authorise spend and safety-critical work. Set target dates carefully, because a requested date is not guaranteed and lead times must be accounted for.

Capture an estimated cost that may include planned hours, materials and services, and retain the approved baseline because an estimate can be revised but the baseline makes later comparisons more meaningful. Track actual progress by recording time, parts consumed, inspections and notes as work happens, since a status field alone does not show what changed on the asset, and document any growth in the job, as a broken bearing found during inspection may require new parts and approval.

For a simple variance, subtract estimated cost from actual cost: if the approved estimate was $7,500 and actual cost was $8,400, the job finished $900 over estimate. The number needs explanation before it becomes a performance judgment, and like should be compared with like, since an apparent overrun may reflect missing estimate lines.

Separate an order from an invoice, because a work order tracks the job, a supplier invoice requests payment and a purchase order is another document that may authorise buying parts. Connect related records such as asset history, inspection findings, purchase orders and customer requests, and close only after checking completion evidence such as the output, safety test or customer sign-off required by the job.

Review repeated orders, since several work orders for the same machine may signal a root cause or weak preventive maintenance, avoid duplicate orders for one fault, and distinguish planned work, which can be scheduled from a recurring job plan, from unplanned breakdowns that need immediate triage. A small business without software can use a clear numbered record with owner, scope, approval, date, cost and completion evidence, and for owners the work order is the job's audit trail of what was requested, authorised, done and learned.