A work order example is more useful filled in than blank, so this page walks one from the request to the close: an example of maintenance work order on a real asset with the fields a technician fills and the ones a supervisor adds. It then says what work order samples found online usually leave out, which is the findings and the times, and sets out the work order format that makes the record useful to the next technician and to the monthly report rather than just to the job at hand.
The example, from request to close
Asset: conveyor C2, drive end, in packing. Type: reactive. Priority: high, line stopped. Reported: Tuesday 09:40 by the packing lead, belt tracking off and squealing. Assigned: the day technician. Started: 10:05, after lockout. Found: the tail pulley bearing running hot, belt tracking adjusted last month had slipped again, guard bolts loose. Done: bearing replaced from stores, belt re-tracked, guard bolts torqued. Parts: one bearing, part number recorded. Time: 2.5 hours. Returned: 12:35, test run witnessed. Corrective raised: check the tracking adjustment on C1 and C3, which have the same design. Closed by the supervisor Wednesday.
What the samples leave out
Most work order samples show the request half: asset, description, priority, assignee. They stop before the half that makes the record worth keeping: what was found, what was replaced, the reported and returned times, and the follow-up raised. Without findings the next technician opens the machine blind; without times there is no MTTR and no downtime figure; without the follow-up the same fault is found again on the sister machine as a breakdown. The example above is the second half written out because the first half is easy.
The format that works
One asset per work order, so history rolls up to the asset. A type field, because the reactive share is read from it. Three times: reported, started, returned. A findings field that expects a sentence, not a tick. Parts by part number. Hours honestly, including waiting. A field for the corrective work order raised. And a close by someone other than the person who did the job, on sites that need the check. The maintenance work order template worksheet on this site is that format, printable, and a CMMS is the same fields on a phone.
Reading it back a year later
The point of the format is what it lets you do later: sort the reactive work orders by asset to find the repeaters; read the findings on C2 before the next hot bearing; calculate MTTR from the times; price the breakdown against the planned version, which on this site's worked example is 3.4 hours against 1.1. A work order that cannot be read back that way was a job ticket, not a record.
Questions people ask about work order example
Should a work order be one job or one asset?
One job on one asset. A job that touches three machines is three work orders, so that each machine's history is complete.
Who closes a work order?
The technician records the work; the supervisor closes it after checking the findings and the times, on sites where the record is audited. On a small team the technician closes it and the supervisor reads the day's closes.
How much should the findings say?
What was wrong, what caused it if known, and what was done about it, in a sentence or two. Checked, ok, is not a finding.