If the problem description in a work order is unclear, the person to whom it is issued can guess at what needs to be done or can walk around asking relevant parties what they think. Either way wastes time and can result in fixing a problem that didn’t exist instead of the one the work order was issued for.
Today, a work order is typically issued from an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system or Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Everyone involved in creating or inputting the data for such a system needs to be familiar with the rules and accepted practices for doing so. Here are some things to address when doing so:
- Is the work category preventive maintenance (PM), predictive maintenance (PdM), repair, or administrative work?
- Don’t waste space in the problem description by including the asset name; that information is already provided elsewhere in the work order.
- You don’t have to use all the allotted problem description space but provide enough information to clearly describe the problem.
- Describe the problem rather than propose the solution or interpret observations. Writing an accurate description may require some research.
