Basic terminology

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Table: A table is a list of entries, each of which contains information about something. For example, the Buildings Table is a list of the buildings where your organization does maintenance work. Each entry in the Buildings Table contains information about a particular building (for example, its name and/or address).

Identifier code: Each entry in a table must be given an identifier code. No two entries in the same table should have the same code.

Equipment: Equipment is a general term for any device that might require maintenance. It's up to you to decide what constitutes a separate piece of equipment. For example, you might consider a complete assembly line as a single piece of equipment, or you might choose to regard the line as a system made up of many separate pieces.

Space: A space is an area in a building. This might be a single room, a set of adjoining rooms, or an entire floor in an office block. It's up to you whether you want to have a small number of large spaces or a large number of smaller ones—choose whatever is most suitable for you and your personnel. For example, if you have to deal with large rooms, you might divide them into multiple spaces; a large factory floor might be divided into the spaces "Factory Floor Northeast", "Factory Floor Northwest", etc. so you can specify locations with more precision and make it easier for personnel to find the site of a problem.

Maintenance unit: A maintenance unit (or simply a unit) is either a space or a piece of equipment. In general, MainBoss lets you perform similar operations on both. For example, you can schedule preventive maintenance for either a space or equipment. You can prepare work orders requesting work on either type of unit, and keep work histories of both types of unit.

Because spaces and equipment are so similar in MainBoss, you often have the freedom to choose which one you will use in a certain situation. For example, the heating/air conditioning facilities for a particular area could be regarded as equipment or they could be considered part of the space itself. It all depends on which approach fits better with the way your organization works.

Note: In MainBoss, the main difference between equipment and spaces is that equipment can have capital costs, while spaces can't.

Work request: A work request is typically based on a complaint from someone outside the maintenance department. It states preliminary information about the problem: the location, the name of the person reporting the problem, the date/time the report was received, and a brief description of the problem itself.

Work order: A work order is a detailed description of work to be done; typically, this can be printed off and handed to the personnel who have been assigned to do the work.

A work order is more detailed than a work request. For example, a work order may specify the amount of time the job is expected to take, the materials to be used, and so on. Such details are not present in a work request. In general, work requests are designed so they can be filled out by non-maintenance personnel (for example, a department secretary) while work orders are usually filled out by maintenance management. When you create a new work order using the information from an existing work request, we say that the work request has been transferred to the work order.

Corrective and preventive work orders: A corrective work order specifies work to be done in order to solve a reported problem.

A preventive work order is prepared automatically by MainBoss's facilities for scheduling preventive maintenance. Preventive work orders usually specify step-by-step tasks that need to be done in preventive maintenance operations.

Report: A report lists information extracted from MainBoss's files. MainBoss can print many different types of reports, including work histories, cost summaries, equipment lists, and so on.

Items: Items are materials used in the course of your maintenance work, such as spare parts, tools, chemicals, and so on. There are two types of item:

Inventory items are materials that you want MainBoss to keep track of. For example, you will probably want MainBoss to keep track of important spare parts for all your equipment; in this way, MainBoss can tell you when you are running low and need to order more parts to keep in your inventory.
Non-inventory items are materials that you don't want MainBoss to keep track of. These might include materials that you don't normally keep in inventory (parts that you only order when they're needed) or materials that you simply don't bother tracking (for example, basics like glue and tape that are used so often it would be too much work to keep detailed records about how much each job uses).

MainBoss Administration: A collection of operations usually reserved for the person who is in charge of MainBoss in your organization. For example, the administration features of MainBoss can control who is and isn't allowed to use specific MainBoss functions, who is permitted to archive MainBoss data, and so on.

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