Glossary

What are repeat work orders?

Quick answer

Repeat work orders are jobs raised more than once against the same asset and failure mode within a period. They are a direct measure of rework: effort spent on problems that were treated as symptoms rather than fixed at the root cause.

FormulaRepeat work order rate = (repeat work orders / total work orders) x 100

Benchmark

Benchmark
GoodLow and falling, with the top repeat offenders actively being eliminated.
Warning signA high or persistent repeat rate means the plant is paying to fix the same failures again and again.

Why it matters

Repeat work orders are some of the easiest money to recover because they are already visible in the data. Each one is a fix that did not hold. Ranking assets by repeat-work cost almost always reveals a short list responsible for a large share of avoidable spend.

How to improve it

Identify the top repeat offenders by cost, run root-cause analysis on them, and verify the fix actually held over the following months.

Frequently asked questions

How do you reduce repeat work orders?
Rank repeat failures by cost, run root-cause analysis on the top offenders, fix the cause rather than the symptom, and confirm the failure does not return.

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