It's 4:40 pm. It's been a long shift. Twelve Work Orders, and behind them several hundred completed steps. Visual inspections, measurements, cleaning, a sensor replacement. Almost everything went to plan. Only in three places did the technician write something down: a bit of play in the gripper, a cable with a chafe mark, a bolt that had come loose again.

Those three notes are the most valuable thing documented that day. And they are exactly the hardest things to find again.

A month later, when the same or a different technician is standing in front of that machine again, the context is gone. The note still exists. But it sits somewhere between checklist 7 and checklist 9, on page 4 of a paper report, or in row 312 of an Excel sheet.

Knowledge you can't find is no better than knowledge you never had.

The Problem Isn't Missing Notes. It's Scattered Notes.

Technicians document more than people think. The problem lies elsewhere: important observations sit as single lines inside long checklists, between hundreds of routine steps all ticked off as "OK." Anyone looking for anomalies later has to work through everything. With paper files and spreadsheets, that's practically impossible.

That costs time that's missing elsewhere. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, knowledge workers spend nearly 20 percent of their workweek looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who know something. In maintenance, that means asking around at shift handover, flipping through binders, and searching spreadsheets.

And the problem is growing. According to a study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, in US manufacturing alone up to 1.9 million jobs could remain unfilled by 2033. When experienced technicians leave and new ones join, the quality of documentation decides whether knowledge stays in the organization or walks out the door with the person.

All Notes of a Work Order at a Glance

With the new notes features in WAKU Care, notes are no longer buried deep inside a checklist. They are collected automatically and summarized clearly.

On the overview page of every Work Order, technicians and supervisors immediately see all notes captured during execution, no matter which of the many individual steps they came from. Whoever reviews or signs off the Work Order at the end of the day no longer has to open every task to find the one important remark. It's right where you look first.

🎬 Notes summary on the overview page of a Work Order and in the Asset Record File. Clicking a note jumps directly into the related Work Order with all details.

The Note History of an Asset in the Asset Record File

The feature becomes even more powerful at the asset level. The Asset Record File brings together the notes from all Work Orders on that asset. Whoever stands in front of the same machine four weeks later opens the Asset Record File and instantly sees what colleagues noticed during previous visits. The play in the gripper. The chafed cable. The bolt that keeps coming loose.

Individual observations turn into a readable history of the asset. And that history is often the decisive clue: when the same issue has been noted in three consecutive maintenance visits, it's no longer a coincidence. It's a signal that deserves a planned action before it turns into a failure.

And when context is needed, one click is enough: from any note, you jump straight into the related Work Order, with all details, checklists, timestamps, and people involved.

Filter Instead of Search: Work Orders with Notes or Spare Parts

The third addition lives in the list of all Work Orders. There are two new filter options:

Show only Work Orders with notes. Out of hundreds of Work Orders in a month, only those remain where someone recorded something important. Ideal for the daily review by the shift lead or the monthly analysis.

Show only Work Orders with spare parts usage. Where were parts actually replaced? Which assets consume unusually large amounts of material? These questions can now be answered in seconds, instead of manually cross-checking bookings and reports.

🎬 List of all Work Orders with the "with notes" filter activated, followed by "with spare parts usage." Clicking a filtered Work Order opens the detail view.

For technicians, this means less searching, faster understanding, and better handovers. For decision makers, it means a clear view of where things are really happening across the asset fleet, without opening every single order.

Start Now: No Extra Effort

The new features require no setup. Every note captured in a Work Order automatically appears in the Work Order overview and in the Asset Record File of the related asset. The filters are available in the Work Order list right away.

For teams already using WAKU Care: open the Work Order list, activate the "with notes" filter, and look at the past four weeks. Which observations show up more than once?

Documentation That Talks Back

Good maintenance lives on small observations. They are the raw material of predictive maintenance. But only if they can be found again. With WAKU Care, every note becomes part of an asset's history, visible in the Work Order, in the Asset Record File, and in the filtered list. One click, and yesterday's knowledge is back today.

Want to see the new notes features in action? Request a demo directly.

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