Lean Project Team Improves Maintenance Work Orders
By Bob Wilson, CDOT Office of Communication
April 27, 2016
There is good news for CDOT Maintenance and Traffic team members: the new capabilities provided by the DOT1 Work Order Project (part of the Maintenance Work Order Process Improvement Project) are live in the SAP computer system as of Monday, April 25, 2016, increasing the consistency of the work order processes and the accuracy of the data.
“When this Lean process improvement project began, our main objective was to achieve consistency statewide in all our maintenance programs,” said CDOT Division of Highway Maintenance Director Kyle Lester. “In addition, it supports all three of our peaks – Our People, Leading-Edge Technology, and Healthy Multi-Modal System.”
The project-specific goals included:
simplifying the overall look and feel of the maintenance work order;
decreasing the time front-line employees spend entering work order information,
making the entry of data easier for everyone who creates work orders; and
lowering the risk associated with the decision-making that is based on work order data.
Project map for Lean Construction
Maintenance facility
This project provides a number of benefits that improve our work order processes, including:
Reducing the visible fields by 43 percent, making it easier to use, less cumbersome and more efficient to enter data
Decreasing the number of tabs and sections to navigate – making it more user-friendly and helping to set the framework to allow work orders to be used on mobile devices
Reducing the number of fields requiring user input by 80 percent; automated fields decreases human error and time spent entering data while increasing the accuracy of data
Programming fields automatically, populating them in the background and concealing the fields from screen view, decreasing the possibility of inaccurate data entry, errors, and reporting
Providing specific activity layouts, detailing what data needs to be entered for a specific activity
Streamlining data to prevent users from accessing multiple transactions, making data entry more efficient and simple when entering snow event information
Creating one maintenance work order type by the user – providing a clear business process, and more effective training and user requirements
“The bottom line is the work order will now look different, with fewer fields that require data entry to enter and more fields being populated automatically,” added Lester. “It’s truly a big win for maintenance, traffic, and Team CDOT.”
Gary Vansuch, CDOT’s Director of Process Improvement, agrees. “This is another great project which utilizes the principles and practices of Lean – especially the principles of continuous improvement, respect for people, and taking a burden off of the customer – to make significant progress”, Vansuch says. “I congratulate everyone who was involved in making CDOT more effective, efficient and elegant, on our road to becoming the Best Department of Transportation in the Country.”