Mobile work orders for mobile maintenance
Users of major EAM systems still cannot get maintenance work orders on their mobile devices. Not having mobile access to service data when you are “out in the field” is like leaving your toolbox at home!
Asset-intensive industries operate in highly competitive markets, and each time an asset fails it can be disruptive and costly. At the same time, organisations must adhere to stringent Work Health Safety (WHS) and environmental regulations. Maintaining critical asset availability, reliability and profitability is essential to an organisation’s success.
Infrastructure and asset maintenance teams need to meet the organisation’s objectives of operating and maintaining a sustainable infrastructure. Enterprise asset management systems are critical to facilitating and optimising the long-term management of assets.
The need to accurately consider asset performance, service level, and future viability has never been more important in striving to reduce costs and obtain improved asset uptime and availability.
Support productive and effective work order management, inspections and inventory management. Then field teams can deliver responsive and efficient services. It’s all about retaining what assets, tools and equipment you have for longer, thereby reducing replacement expenditures.
Preventive maintenance for assets
Proactive maintenance
Even though proactive maintenance methods require more of an investment in time and money, the results are typically more cost-effective, and more efficient, and they can extend the life of assets. This approach often reduces downtime and directly impacts overall productivity, as well as the company’s profitability.
Proactive maintenance is a preventive maintenance strategy that works to correct the root causes of failure and avoid breakdowns caused by underlying equipment conditions. The purpose of proactive maintenance is to see machine failures as something that can be anticipated and eliminated before they develop.
Creating a proactive maintenance program helps organizations find hidden inefficiencies. It is a more complex approach that works to solve problems at their root, helping to avoid the deterioration of the asset. As part of your maintenance plan, proactive maintenance can result in significant cost savings.
What is proactive maintenance
What is work order software?
Before we get stuck into what mobile work orders can achieve for your organisation, it’s important to understand what work orders are. Simply put, a work order can be defined in two ways; an order sent from a client or customer or an order created internally to perform an action.
Work order software is a modern management tool that uses features to help organisations keep track of preventive maintenance and organise and report incoming and outgoing work orders. Work orders generally refer to maintenance or repairs to assets, vehicles, machinery, tools or facilities. Maintenance work orders are prioritised and created as one of two types based on the criticality of the service or asset:
- Preventative – assets maintained on a regular schedule to prevent future failures
- Reactive – assets repaired after a breakdown has occurred; also known as corrective maintenance
Mobile work orders for enterprise
Mobile work orders for enterprise refer to accessing work processes for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) of physical assets, equipment, buildings, plant and equipment etc. Access to these work orders is via a mobile device in the form of mobile apps and web-based systems, hence “mobile work orders”.
The idea behind mobile work orders as a business practice is that it enables remote workers (personnel who spend part or all of their time away from the central office) access to asset data and maintenance work orders on a mobile device usually a tablet or mobile phone. Transmitting work order data through integration to the organisation’s enterprise system when completed.
Maintenance work orders on a mobile device eliminate the need for paper forms or other data reporting and communication methods, to move work orders and other asset data information to and from the point where the work is being carried out.
Mobile work orders and MiCatX functionality
Capability to move, add and change asset records including location, photos, make, model, dimensions, service events, and current status. Capture and edit data anytime, anywhere either online or offline.
Proof and quality control; ability to take and upload assets, tools and equipment images and create new records. Take pictures of maintenance events and create work orders for failed machinery parts and request replacements.
Set alerts to arrive automatically on your phone and never miss an event again!
Assign items; issue and return (check-in/out) loaned items quickly and easily on your phone.
Audit capability; audit items by scanning your location and then the asset barcodes; move on to the next location and repeat – that easy!
Record materials and labour; against work orders; to account for parts and materials used and time spent.
EAM communication between systems
Supplement not substitute; without proper integration, organisations fail to fully automate and optimise their processes.
Enterprise asset management (EAM) addresses the entire lifecycle management of an organisation’s physical assets to help maximise value. Therefore a whole solution is often comprised of lots of different systems working in unison to achieve organisational objectives.
One of the challenges facing organisations that rely on EAM/ERP systems is integrating with mobile work order apps.
Three types of data integration
Enterprise systems often lack the functionality and specialised capabilities necessary to effectively track and manage assets. This creates multiple challenges for the organisation such as data integrity, accuracy, and the ability to produce accurate reports.
Here are the commonly used types of data transfers that assist in bringing together this crucial information:
Manual Transfers
The simplest way to transfer data is when the two systems exchange files offline, by manual transfer. In this case an authorised user(s) export or import data from, or to, the ERP system. Typically, this type of integration is utilised for periodic activities such as audits.
Scheduled Transfers
Scheduled transfer integration schedules imports and exports to meet data synchronisation requirements between a system and the ERP system. This type of integration is typically used to track and manage assets on a daily basis.
Automatic Transfers
The closest form of integration is when certain activities in either system result in automatic data transfer to the other system. Actions such as the disposal or destruction of an asset might be such an event that triggers the automatic adjustment in the ERP general ledger for example.
Mobile maintenance work orders and MiCatX
Hardcat’s mobile app MiCatX has an intuitive user experience that makes it easy for your field technicians to see work orders allocated to them, what needs to be done on which assets and where – regardless of whether they are an employee or contractors.
There’s no need for training, no paper trails and no double handling, just instant updates and superior visibility of critical work orders, from anywhere on any device.
- Quick colour check to see faulty assets or actions required
- Each user only sees their own assets and work orders
- The Master data set is always up-to-date and accurate
- Audit assets far more frequently – because it’s quick!
- Minimal user training and rapid staff adoption – happy staff!
With Hardcat solutions, you get complete control of all your planned and reactive asset maintenance and efficiently manage your maintenance crews. Therefore maximising your productivity, by setting up everyday tasks, templates and workflows and automatically scheduling recurring work orders.
Automate alerts of pending, in-progress, incomplete and missed maintenance events, with in-built escalations, so your maintenance is always completed on time, every time.
All of the individual scheduled maintenance work orders are loaded into the system and we receive automated notifications when they come up, Beckmann said. Each week, our maintenance co-coordinator picks up scheduled jobs and allocates them to the appropriate supervisors.
Hayman Island case study
Give maintenance crews the mobility they need!
With Hardcat, get complete control of all your planned and reactive asset maintenance and efficiently manage your maintenance crews. Maximise your productivity by setting up everyday tasks, templates and workflows and automatically scheduling recurring work orders. Automate alerts of pending, in-progress, incomplete and missed maintenance events, with in-built escalations, so maintenance is always completed on time, every time.
Not only are we getting fewer incidents because of a better managed preventative maintenance regime but also our staff are better organised so that they can get more done in each day. This all adds up to resort maintenance having less impact on island visitors.
John Beckman, Chief Engineer, Hayman Island Resort
When new work orders come in, maintenance managers can attach images and other important files, so technicians see all the related information for each task on their mobile devices. Workers can also review prior work performed on a particular asset to get context for new repairs.
Centralise your repairs, maintenance programs, capital planning and delivery, on a single easy-to-use platform; escape the silo and spreadsheets and join synchronised asset maintenance management.
Hardcat MiCatX benefits
- Asset management and accountability are disseminated throughout the organisation resulting in massive cost savings and reduction in asset losses.
- Dramatically reduce incident report and response times by creating ad-hoc work orders in the field.
- Scan the barcode of the asset to find maintenance activities that need to be performed and view full asset details.
- Re-allocate an asset’s location and/or person ownership reducing the need to go back to “the desk”.
- Monitoring of asset usage to automatically trigger further actions such as maintenance tasks.
Mobile work orders MiCatX app is accessible 24/7 on your smartphone providing anytime anywhere asset control.
Benefits of HardcatWeb
Have you ever needed information right away on a work order or problem? What about the geographical location of a critical piece of equipment or the location of spare parts within a facility? View inventory, stock and part levels, a capability that provides a mobile view of inventory, stock and spare parts.
Web-based asset management HardcatWeb (accessible via web-enabled devices) is designed to help organisations competently track and maintain the assets they own.
Increased visibility of the core Hardcat database via the web browser will provide a host of benefits, including:
- View asset and inventory levels at multiple locations
- Improved responsiveness to assets needing repair and maintenance
- Issue and return (check-in/out) function for loaned devices on the fly
- Scan barcodes for asset and inventory audits
- Schedule and perform asset maintenance with work orders
- Schedulers quickly and easily locate available assets via maps
- Greater oversight and accountability for assets
- Reduction in information bottlenecks
- Timely update of basic asset data such as current location
- Smart options allow administrators to tailor access to suit user requirements and capabilities
More on Maintenance Management
More on Enterprise Maintenance Solutions
Hardcat solutions are cost-effective, easy to implement and a front-end solution to any EAM/ERP system. We provide visibility and traceability, ensuring your ERP system is always up-to-date.
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