Work orders
A work order is the billable unit of work on a vehicle — from the first report, through execution in the shop, to a close-out carrying the full labour and parts cost. Every work order goes through the same enforced lifecycle, whether it was raised by hand, from a maintenance plan, or from a defect found during a vehicle inspection.
Who it's for
The maintenance manager, fleet manager and organization administrator create work orders, assign them to technicians, close them administratively and certify the repair. The technician works their assigned queue — starting and completing the work and adding labour/parts lines — but doesn't close or certify a work order; that's a supervisory step.
Where a work order comes from
A work order has one of three sources: preventive maintenance (from a schedule, once a service interval is due), defect (reported during a vehicle inspection — a DVIR, Driver Vehicle Inspection Report — as a safety-affecting fault; in that case a high-priority order is raised automatically and linked to the specific defect), and ad-hoc (unplanned work raised manually). The source shows on the list and the order's detail view, so planned work stays distinguishable from reactive work when maintenance KPIs are computed.
Lifecycle and assignment
An order moves through open → assigned → in progress → completed → closed, and each transition is an explicit action the application rejects unless the order is in the right state for it. Assignment (or reassignment) to a technician is possible while the order is open or assigned; starting the work requires a prior assignment, and completing it requires work already underway. Cost lines can be added as long as the order isn't completed yet — once it's completed and closed, the cost is frozen.
Closing is a separate, administrative step after the work is done — it rolls the order's cost up into the vehicle's TCO record. Certifying the repair (a quality / road-worthiness sign-off) is possible once the work is completed, independently of closing, and is recorded with a signer and a timestamp. When an order originated from a defect, closing it automatically drives that defect through repair and certification and — once no other open safety defect remains — restores the vehicle's road-worthiness (see Inspections & DVIR).
Cost lines and KPIs
Each work-order line is either labour or a part, with a quantity and a unit cost; a part line optionally references a specific stocked part and immediately draws its stock down. The sum of the lines is the order's total cost, in the order's currency. The maintenance console shows, at a glance: the share of schedules not currently overdue, the mean time between failures (the interval between defect-sourced or ad-hoc orders), the mean time to repair (open to close) and the count of orders still open.
In the background
Closing an order publishes an event that rolls its cost into the vehicle's TCO record. When the order was linked to a defect, that same close automatically certifies the defect and — as long as no other open safety defect remains — restores the vehicle's road-worthiness, with no further action from the user.