Work Orders and Preventive Maintenance

Work orders are the execution layer of the CMMS, turning requests, inspections, PM schedules, and risk findings into trackable work. A healthy flow moves from need, to supervisor confirmation, to scheduling, to technician completion, to updated history and metrics.

What makes a good work order

Give the next person enough context: clear title, facility, asset when known, priority, due date when timing matters, assignment, symptom or task detail, and notes or attachments. Attaching the asset builds better history and analytics.

Board modes

The same work orders power three views. Use List for dense filtering, searching, and review. Use Kanban for status movement, dragging cards between waiting, in progress, blocked or review, complete, and reassigned. Use Calendar for due dates, dragging a work order to reschedule and using the day action to create work for crew planning. If a filtered board shows a narrowed or truncated count, check facility, priority, status, assigned user, saved view, and date range filters, or whether it shows a limited slice for performance.

Preventive maintenance

PM schedules create recurring work from asset plans. Calendar PMs run by date, meter PMs run from readings like runtime hours or cycles, and condition PMs run when linked meter thresholds are crossed. Use PMs for predictable maintenance and normal work orders for one-off repairs.

Closing the loop

Capture work performed, parts used, condition found, whether the asset is safe to operate, follow-up work, and meter readings. Completion data becomes asset history that strengthens troubleshooting, PM planning, and capital review.