What belongs on a work order, and what does not

A work order needs nine pieces of information. Most forms ask for twenty-five, and the extra sixteen are why work gets closed in a batch on Friday from memory. Every field is a small tax on the person you most need to keep.

The nine that earn their place

• •What is wrong, in the words of whoever noticed
• •Where, specific enough to walk to without asking
• •Which piece of equipment, if it is about equipment
• •How urgent, chosen from a short list with the consequences written next to each
• •Who is responsible now
• •When it was raised, and when it is due
• •What was actually done, in one sentence from the person who did it
• •A photograph, at least one, taken at the job
• •Whether it is finished, or turned back with a reason

The ones to delete

Each of these exists somewhere for a good reason and is dead weight almost everywhere else.

• •Cause codes with more than a dozen options, which get filled with the first item on the list
• •Sub-category under category, which nobody agrees the meaning of after six months
• •Estimated hours entered by hand, when the system can learn it from the last twenty runs
• •Cost entered by a technician, who does not know it and should not be guessing
• •Free text fields duplicating a field above them

Ask the requester less, and the technician more

The person reporting a fault should be asked almost nothing: where, what, a photograph. Everything else is a job for triage. The person doing the work should be asked for one thing that matters: what was actually wrong, in a sentence, because that sentence becomes your failure history.

Print is a different form

If work orders get printed for contractors or for a shutdown, the paper version needs the location, the asset, the steps and a space to write. It does not need your status list or your reference number in a box. Design that page once and it stops being reinvented by whoever is on shift.

The test for any new field

Somebody will ask for a new field roughly monthly. Ask them two questions: which decision changes because of this answer, and who will look at it. If they cannot name a person and a decision, the field is a report request wearing a costume.