As budgets and manpower shrink, maintenance managers are working to find ways to become more efficient, and many are working towards making their workforce mobile. If your workers do not become more efficient the work cannot get done. The first casualty is preventive maintenance (PM). There is no immediate impact to stopping a PM program, however, in 3-5 years you will have added an additional 20% burden to your budget and work load. This cycle will continue to build upon itself. The alternative is to find ways to help maintenance professionals and tradesmen become more effective.
Allowing the tradesmen to manage their workload while they are at the jobsite is a great way to build efficiency, accountability and accuracy of the data in your work order process. TeamWORKS is convinced the implementation of a mobile work order solution can help manage the work load and help maintenance stay ahead of the game. The prevalence of smart phones, iPads® and other mobile devices combined with the ease of connectivity to the internet has put this technology within reach of maintenance departments of almost any size and budget.
Moving to a Mobile Solution
When you decide to move to a mobile work order processing system there are few rules you may want to follow:
- Identify the requirements of your mobile solution
- Establish a budget
- Select your hardware and software
TeamWORKS believes it is important to select the software and hardware last. Many of our customers come to us with a device in mind and tell us what they want the device to do. Fortunately, the TeamWORKS QuickApp is a device independent solution. In most cases, however, selecting the hardware first eliminates many options you may want to consider and in some cases, locks you into a price point your budget may only just be able to handle. Selecting the software and hardware simultaneously will allow you the most flexibility.
Once the mobile solution is in place it is imperative you require your tradesmen to use the new technology. Change can be hard but management must enforce this new policy. After six weeks of use, new processes will be “business as usual” and the tradesmen will not fight the change any longer.