The life of a work order

A work order is how most maintenance and service work gets organized. The steps vary between companies and systems, but the shape is the same almost everywhere. Here it is with one example: a hydraulic press, PRESS-042, that has started leaking oil.

1. Request

Someone notices a problem and reports it. An operator sees oil under PRESS-042 at the start of the shift and reports it with a short note: "oil leak under the press, left side".

Requests can also come from inspections, from a preventive maintenance schedule that comes due, from a sensor alarm, or, in field service, from a customer call.

What goes wrong: the request names the wrong machine or none at all, or describes the symptom so vaguely that someone has to go and look before anything else can happen.

2. Review and approval

A supervisor or planner checks the request. Is it real? Is it a duplicate? How urgent is it? The leak is real, not a safety issue yet, and production can continue for now. It gets a medium priority and becomes a work order.

What goes wrong: requests sit unreviewed, and the person who reported them assumes nothing will happen and stops reporting.

3. Planning

The planner works out what the job needs. Which skills? Which parts? How long? Is a lockout/tagout required? Can it be done while the press runs?

For PRESS-042, the planner checks the history and finds the same leak was fixed eight months ago by replacing a hose fitting. They reserve a new fitting and a seal kit, add the lockout procedure, and estimate two hours.

What goes wrong: the history is empty or says only "fixed leak", so the planner cannot tell which part to reserve.

4. Scheduling

The job is fitted into the week, around production and other work. PRESS-042 has a planned stop on Thursday afternoon, so the job goes there. Field service adds travel and routing to this step.

What goes wrong: the job is scheduled before the parts arrive, so the technician shows up and cannot finish.

5. Execution

The technician locks out the press, finds the leak, and replaces the fitting. They notice the hose is rubbing against a bracket, which probably caused the last failure too, and add a clamp.

What goes wrong: the technician finds something the plan did not cover and has to stop, or works around it and does not tell anyone.

6. Recording and closing

The technician records what they found and did: "Leak at the left return hose fitting. Replaced fitting and seals. Hose rubbing on frame bracket, added clamp. Check clamp at next PM." They log two hours and the parts used. A supervisor reviews the record and closes the order.

What goes wrong: this is the step most often skipped. The order is closed with "done", and everything the technician learned, including the rubbing hose, stays in their head.

7. Review

Closed work orders become history. They feed metrics such as MTTR and MTBF, cost reports, and audits. When the same fault keeps coming back, they are the evidence for root cause analysis.

In the example, the second leak in eight months, with the note about the rubbing hose, is enough to add a hose inspection to the PM plan for every press of this type.

What makes the cycle work

The cycle depends on information moving forward. The request has to reach a planner, the plan has to reach the technician, and the technician's findings have to reach the next person. The last handover is the weakest, because it happens at the end of the job, when the machine runs again and the next job is waiting.

Teams that improve their work orders usually start there: they make recording at the machine faster, with photos, short templates, or voice notes, and they read the closing notes as part of the review. See Why maintenance knowledge gets lost at the machine.