Impact of categorization of work orders

Over the last 10 years, I have seen several versions of the categorization of work order. More recently, organizations are adopting the ISO 14224 categorization of work. This aspect of an ERP system is often overlooked or paid little attention to as the implementation of ERP system involves several moving pieces. However, there is a lot to be gained by implementing a well thought out and fit for purpose categorization system for maintenance and engineering work at an operating facility. My intend here is to share my thoughts with the larger community and get feedback on what the challenges are.

Some of the impacts that can be seen are:

-         Most maintenance organization are not up to par in terms of using the ERP system to code failures. By forcing a system to pick the “right” kind of work order, the analysis to identify trends and bad actors become less tedious

-         Categorization of enhancement activities, PM and corrective work provides the leadership an overview of where the organization sits. For eg. Excessive enhancement/ engineering activities and low corrective maintenance costs may indicate unnecessary spend when the operations may not require it

-         Setting up a budget and targeting improvements to reduce operating costs. The ability to deep dive is dependent on many aspects (master data, transactional data, failure codes, etc.). However, by just categorization the work the right way, organizations can help forecast budget and set realistic targets to reduce costs

-         From a lean perspective, it would make it less tedious to identify non value added activities and drive efficiency

This is an overview of the potential impact of a very simple activity.