Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, you likely schedule multiple maintenance and service events every day. But do you keep accurate track of how much this work is costing your organization?
Unsupervised service events can lead to escalating expenses due to lack of transparency, inefficient management, and more.  Automated work order tracking mitigates these concerns by enabling you to manage costs, labor hours and asset expenditures all from an automated, centralized platform.
A formal work order system can provide you with an efficient solution to prioritize and coordinate business tasks. A standardized procedure to track work orders results in increased efficiency and productivity. Companies can run several different types of work orders:
- General work order: A general work order entails any maintenance task that does not fall into the preventive or emergency category. Usually general work orders include tasks like installing new equipment, taking down old machinery or painting walls.
- Maintenance work orders: There are various subtypes of maintenance work orders that can be scheduled:
- Preventive maintenance: the most common type of maintenance work order, preventive work orders are scheduled regularly to keep equipment functional throughout the year. These work orders include important documents like checklists and vendor instructions.
- Inspection: In order to reduce equipment downtime, it is crucial to run routine inspection audits. An inspection work order may lead to a corrective action being taken to prevent further damage.
- Corrective maintenance: A corrective maintenance work order usually follows inspection or preventive maintenance to address a problem discovered by the technician. Such work orders involve repair, replacement or procurement of new equipment.
How can automated work order tracking control costs?
A cloud-based asset management system enables you to create work orders for all business items. Being centrally accessible, work orders can be assigned to staff users and vendors. A work order in progress can be continuously updated for additional costs incurred throughout the maintenance event.
Work order tracking in real time enables you to run seamless workflows while recording all relevant details. A robust work order management system not only reduces downtime but also helps save on extra costs incurred by the business. Let’s discuss how work order management can help you save money:
1. Create work order bundles
For companies with several offices, work orders are likely to be dispersed across different locations. There might be some high traffic locations that need maintenance quite often. A good idea would be to list all maintenance tasks for one location under a single work order. This reduces the number of maintenance trips that would be made for each location. Which means you don’t have to call up the technician again and again.
Listing down service events also enables you to prioritize tasks and address the critical ones urgently. For instance, a bakery sets up a work order for its kitchen. The best way would be to inspect and note down all electric appliances that need to be serviced or replaced. Any other urgent service tasks like leaking sinks can also be put on the same work order.Â
When you have all tasks consolidated for a location you can manage a single maintenance trip and reduce billable hours.
Read more: Boost Efficiency By Tracking Work Order Costs with EZOfficeInventory
2. Link in compliance safety requirements
Failure to maintain a safe working environment for employees can result in hefty fines and violations. This is especially true when working with heavy equipment and machinery that needs to be handled with expert care. For this purpose, work order tracking enables you to link in safety and compliance regulations for each maintenance job.
Every work order created on a cloud based platform has the option of adding related documents. Here admins can upload compliance and safety rules so that technicians can follow the guidelines easily. Moreover, having all related regulations under work orders prepares you for an internal audit when the time comes. Strictly following maintenance protocols reduces your chances of incurring extra expenses such as fines and penalties.
3. Extend equipment longevity
Work order tracking involves keeping a record of miscellaneous service and maintenance activities scheduled to reduce downtime. By ensuring timely work order management, a company can lower chances of unexpected breakdowns and ultimately productivity delays. Improved equipment functionality eliminates the chances of sudden monetary expenses.
Undetected downtime results in reactive maintenance which is costly and time consuming as it halts the workflow. The best way to avoid losses is to schedule work orders in time and follow through the progress.
4. Speed up issue resolution
With a manual work order system it takes time to deploy service tasks and this may end up delaying the final projects. An automated work order tracking solution lets you create a maintenance or general service task on a centrally accessible platform. From here the admin can upload the required checklists, compliance and safety guidelines. Other than this, inventory required can also be added to estimate accurate work order costs.
Having all related data at one place speeds up issue resolution and prevents extra delays that result from getting all resources on board. You can directly contact the vendors by sending them an email and get the work order started. Moreover, technicians can log into the app from anywhere and check the status of the work order and expedite it if needed. Such actions help reduce downtime to a minimum so that production loss is minimized.
5. Accurately forecast replacement parts
The majority of maintenance works require replacement equipment parts. Lack of robust inventory management for service tasks can lead to overspending by 12% to 20% of the original cost. Failure to find the right equipment parts on time can lead to last minute procurement deals which can be expensive.
With work order tracking, you can accurately forecast the inventory items that will be required for a certain task. A tracking software enables you to link modules together and run streamlined inventory management for maintenance events. Automated procurement lets you order exactly what you need just in time so that the work order can progress smoothly.
6. Track WO KPIs for future trends
According to statistics, the ROI for organizations using business intelligence and analytics is 1300%. This shows that business data plays a critical role in the bottom line of a company. A cloud based system stores all history related to completed work orders, including maintenance parts, inventory and labor hours.
Actionable data can be used to run reports to analyse budget expenses and explore downtime reasons. A detailed insight can help reveal underlying causes for production delays which can then prevent similar cases in the future. In addition to this, work order tracking enables you to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) for the future which can yield higher rates of returns for the business.
About EZOfficeInventory
EZOfficeInventory is a leading asset tracking software. It allows you to track, maintain, and report on inventory from anywhere, at any time. We offer a free 15-day trial – no credit card required!
