How you handle work requests is a significant factor in the success of your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Should you perform work without a work request and then work order? For priority 0 (emergency) and priority 1 (urgent/critical) work, the work order can, and typically should, follow the maintenance response. But few situations are priority 1 and even fewer are priority 0.
What happens when this practice is followed for non-emergency and non-critical repairs, or even maintenance? The supervisor typically notes the work on a piece of paper with every intention of creating the work order (entered later). But because the situation isn’t truly an emergency or urgent due to criticality, that paper isn’t walked over to where it can be entered into the CMMS.
So you lose the history on that equipment. The crew also performs the work without benefit of information that is normally on a work order. This leads to additional equipment failures and the illusion of a CMMS failure. But it is really a “maintenance practices” failure.
