How much time and money is wasted responding to work order requests for problems that don’t exist or are easy to resolve?
There are ways around these nuisance work orders. Establish a checklist for types of equipment and make it part of the procedure for your requestors to step through the checklist before submitting the request. It’s not difficult to do if you have the proper work order/asset software. The checklist process should be in the request module. If it’s not, then perhaps you should look for a system that has this basic functionality.
The productivity increase and money saved by avoiding these nuisance work orders can be quite substantial. And the cost to implement this system is minimal.
We suggest you start by creating a work order checklist for a large group of assets
Let’s take coolers for example. Any time a work order for a cooler is about to be submitted, the requestor should be presented with a list of things to check:
1. Ensure the breaker has not been tripped
2. Check to see if the door is closed
3. Kick the unit very hard on the left side and call it Sally…
Or whatever you think needs to be checked. It’s not specific to each cooler but covers a broad list of things to check that apply to all or most of them.
Once you’ve implemented the checklist for the types of assets you think need the checklist you can then move a little deeper. Perhaps have a more detailed checklist for walk-in coolers and chest coolers. Implement that next for each sub-type for an asset. Once that’s done for all your sub –types you can go down one more level where it’s necessary. For example, if it’s an ACME brand cooler you must add the step to check for Road Runner Bait in the gears. If that’s not specific enough, then once you’ve completed that level you implement a checklist for a specific unit. It will take some time, but once you’ve planned your strategy you will be surprised by how quickly it gets going.
One final note: this process will never be done. There will always be tweaks and changes to be made. But hey, with all the time you’ll save not fixing things that don’t need fixing, you’ll have plenty of time to dedicate to this!
