Work Order

In IFS/Preventive and Corrective Maintenance, work orders for all types of maintenance tasks are administrated. In IFS/Service Management, work orders for all types of services are also administrated. In general, the maintenance tasks and the service tasks can be planned or unplanned. A work order for unplanned tasks is intended for manually registered corrective measures or service, while a work order for planned tasks can either be PM (Preventive Maintenance) - generated or manually registered.

A work order is either PM-generated, created via a fault report, or via a service request. The user can then prepare the work orders for a final accomplishment. Among the information that can be prepared are the budget costs, document information, material, and personnel resources. This means that all necessary information is already available on the work order when the tasks on the work order are to be performed.

All manually registered work orders are automatically assigned a number from 1 to 599,999, in a sequential order. Work orders that are PM-generated are assigned a number beginning from 600,000. This number is defined when installing IFS Applications and therefore can be changed to another number series (e.g., 12000000) if necessary.

A work order can be in progress in IFS/Maintenance for an unlimited period of time. Costs, time, and other information can continuously be reported in for the work order. If IFS/Service Management is used, the information on the work order is transferred to IFS/Customer Orders for invoicing purposes.

Work Order Status

Since a work order can be in progress for an unlimited period of time, there is a status system that defines what can be done with the work order. The status system also facilitates the selection of work orders that can be performed in several windows in IFS/Maintenance. It is not mandatory to use all the statuses. A new work order has one of the following two statuses:

Work Request - This status means that the work order has been PM-generated. Also work orders that are created in Prepare Work Order or Active Work Orders receive this status.
Fault Report - This is the status for a new fault report. If IFS Applications for Service Management is used, the status for a new service request is set to Fault Report.

The status is then normally changed to one of the following:

Observed - This status means that the work order is observed but not yet ready to be prepared. There might be some information missing on the work order that must be added before it can be prepared.
Under Preparation - This status means that the work order is to be prepared, i.e., you can for example specify operations, reserve material from inventory, connect tools and facilities and connect standard jobs for the work order. You can also connect requisitions to the work order. A planned start date can be set for a work order. After the planned start date has been set, the work order symbol is displayed in the Gantt graph.

After the work order has been prepared, the status is normally changed to Prepared or Released. Occasionally there is a need to not follow the ordinary sequence of status modifications. In this case, the system allows you to change the status differently, either in the forward direction or in the reverse direction, for example from Work Request status directly to Released status or to reverse from Released to Prepared status.

Prepared - This status means that you can modify the prepared information, for example, the internal craft resources, the reserved material, and the information on requisitions of material and external craft. If IFS/CBS is installed, the scheduling of resources by the CBS server will also take place during this status.
Released - This status means that you can issue material for the work order. You can also return to stock the material that has been issued earlier. You can modify the prepared information, for example, the craft information and planned start date. If you are using IFS/CBS, all resource constraints must be resolved in order to release the work order.
Assigned - This status means that the work order has been assigned to the employee who will be responsible for executing the work specified on the work order. If the work order is scheduled in the Scheduling Engine, and the plan which is returned to IFS Applications is suitable, you can assign the work order to the relevant employee (using the Assign to Allocated Executed By option or the Assign to Current User option). When this is done, the work order is automatically set to the Assigned status. This status can be manually set as well.
Accepted - This status means that the employee has accepted the work order and is responsible for executing the work.
On Route - If the employee is required to travel to the location of the work order, the status of the work order should be set to On Route.
Started - This status means that the work that is specified on the work order can be started. You can modify the prepared information if there is a need for doing that.
Work Done - This status means that the work that was specified on the work order has been performed. In this status, information on the performed work is entered, for example, causes and a description of the work done. Also information on time spent and external costs for the work order is entered in this status. Travel expenses connected to a work order can be reported in IFS/Travel Expense. These expenses are displayed in Report In Work Order, the Postings tab. No material transactions can be made after this status. If you are using IFS/CBS, the work order will be removed from the CBS server when the status is changed to Work Done.
Reported - This status means that time transactions are to be authorized. A completion date is to be set for the work order.
Finished - This status means that the work order is a historical work order, i.e., you cannot change any information on the work order. If material has been reserved for the work order but not issued, the reservations are deleted when the status is changed to Finished status. The Historical Work Orders or Historical Routes shows information on work orders that are historical. If you need to modify a historical work order, you can reopen it by using the Reopen operation. After saving the modified information the status must be changed to Finished.

A work order can be canceled at any time if it has no postings connected to it. There is an exception for a work order with Finished status that cannot be canceled.

Canceled - This status means that the work order is cancelled and all the information becomes historical. A cancellation can be performed if there are no postings connected to the work order. The Historical Work Orders or Historical Routes shows information on work orders that are canceled.

The work order is used in IFS/Maintenance, and in IFS Applications for Service Management.