Work Order Operation Feedback
Work order operation feedback is a critical part of the maintenance process, since it forms the basis on which a business can accurately evaluate the effectiveness of maintenance work and analyze possible failure trends.
It is very important to be clear on the objectives of the organization’s work management system and provide sufficient information to satisfy those objectives. Too little feedback results in a weak analysis. In many installations of plant maintenance systems, the issue is too much feedback. This leads to engineers or clerks wasting time specifying details that will never be used, clogging the system and making it too complicated for users.
Description
Work order operation feedback is normally carried out once a task has been completed, however for longer tasks, this feedback may be carried out over a period of time. An optional stage of approval can also be carried out on each reported operation. The overall work order is then closed once all operations are reported, this task can be automated and therefore hidden from the closure process.
Work order operation feedback can be carried out in two ways: inspection feedback, where readings associated with predictive inspections (such as temperature or pressure) are specified and operation feedback, used for general work orders such as breakdowns, overhauls, safety inspections, and so on.
Feedback from readings is usually associated with service definitions that specify which process conditions should be met. If the readings fed are outside the tolerated conditions, appropriate messages are issued automatically. Also, a work order request can be automatically created in this event, either for an investigation or another service.
General feedback can be as simple as indicating that the operation or task is complete. This, however, does not provide any particularly useful information. It is usually appropriate to consider feedback of basic information such as actual labor hours, material usage, or brief textual information. More comprehensive feedback should also be considered. This may include downtime hours, delay time, and error codes.
When feeding back labor hours, the organization must define the objective of this feedback. Is it to provide details of actual job time or to feed the time and attendance system with timesheet information? If the latter is required, care must be taken to ensure that the engineer’s time is not artificially logged against work order operations in order to account for the full shift. Individual's ID's can be linked to the labor hours reported or, with the use of an option, multiple ID's and hours can be logged. Tradition reporting of labor hours using a 'timesheet' type entry option is also available. Timesheet reports allows users to report labor time on many work order operations within the same screen.
Recording downtime is seen as a critical element of engineering feedback. It is imperative that all reporters understand the definition of ‘downtime’. Is downtime purely the engineering element of the failure or should it include all time, from the equipment stopping to the equipment starting up again? Perhaps it could be defined as the time from completion of one quality product until completion of the next one. This interpretation would then bring into play the idea of extra downtime while the process is brought up to speed again. Within M3 Maintenance downtime values can be based on values specified during work order operation feedback or downtime register from the manufacturing application within M3.
Feedback of textual information can be useful, but text is difficult to analyze and takes time to specify. Consideration should be given to using error codes. M3 Maintenance provides three separate error codes, which may be used to define such things as cause, effect, and steps taken to rectify the failure. Error codes can be defined specifically against equipment, against a group of equipment (using item/equipment groups) or used generically across all equipment. As error codes are reported against work order operations, M3 can check if the error codes have already been linked to the equipment, if not, the system can add them automatically. Be wary of using a General or Other code. These tend to become favorites and can bias the analysis. Be wary of creating too many codes where one failure may fall into several categories. It is much better to start with a small number of codes, then after a period of use, review the regularly used ones – these can then be further divided to provide better analysis.
Feedback of delay time can also be useful. M3 Maintenance provides two delay time fields. Delay time could be for example time spent waiting for materials. Analysis of this could help improve warehouse management. Other delays could include time spent waiting for permit authorization, and waiting for equipment access. Each industry probably has special delay types to consider.
If the completion flag is set within the work order operation, the system will either close the operation or set its status to 89. The latter mode is used for approving the operation, a process normally carried out by the maintenance or operations supervision.