Field Service preventive maintenance workflow example

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Field Service preventive maintenance workflow example

    This example illustrates how an aircraft maintenance manager uses ServiceNow Field Service Management integrated with Asset Management to automate preventive maintenance workflows. By replacing inefficient paper-based processes, the system enables real-time visibility and automation of maintenance tasks triggered by specific flight hour thresholds, improving operational efficiency, safety, and compliance.

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    Key Features

    • Maintenance Plan Automation: Maintenance plans trigger diagnostic alerts and generate work orders automatically after defined flight hours (e.g., every 25 and 600 hours).
    • Task Assignment: Work orders and tasks are assigned automatically to field agents based on location, skills, and availability to ensure timely and qualified responses.
    • Technician Notifications and Task Management: Field agents receive notifications, can accept or reroute tasks, and access comprehensive asset details and maintenance history.
    • Integrated Knowledge Support: Technicians have access to relevant knowledge articles, past work order information, and recommendations to facilitate task completion.
    • Automated Scheduling: Completion of maintenance tasks automatically schedules subsequent maintenance, maintaining continuous upkeep.
    • Audit and Reporting: All work order data is logged for compliance audits, reporting, and trend analysis, supporting regulatory requirements and operational insights.

    Field Service Preventive Maintenance Workflow Steps

    1. Define Workflow: Create maintenance plans with scheduled diagnostic and extensive checks based on aircraft type and flight hours.
    2. Auto-generate Work Orders: Automatically create work orders with task templates when maintenance triggers are met, and assign tasks to qualified agents.
    3. Notify Technician: Notify field agents about assignments, allowing them to accept or reroute tasks.
    4. Provide Comprehensive Maintenance: Enable agents to access asset details, service history, required parts, and relevant knowledge to perform tasks effectively.
    5. Complete Work Order Tasks: Update task completion and auto-schedule next maintenance appointments.
    6. Provide Audit Trail: Track all maintenance activities for reporting, audits, and compliance.
    7. Report and Analyze: Use tracked data to support future analysis and ensure compliance.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By implementing this preventive maintenance workflow, ServiceNow customers can automate and streamline maintenance operations, reduce downtime, ensure safety, improve regulatory compliance, and enhance resource allocation through intelligent task assignment and real-time data access.

    This Field Service preventive maintenance workflow example provides an example of an aircraft maintenance manager setting up a maintenance plan to trigger a diagnostic alert after every 25 hours of flight time.

    An aircraft maintenance manager, Lisa, sets up a maintenance plan to trigger a diagnostic alert after every 25 flight hours. Lisa found their paper-based planning processes inefficient and lacking real-time visibility. This led to grounded aircraft and financial losses. Implementing ServiceNow Field Service Management with Asset Management made a significant difference.

    Now, Lisa automates maintenance plans for each aircraft, triggering alerts and generating work orders for diagnostic tasks after every 25 and 600 hours of flight time. The system assigns tasks to avionics field agents based on location, skills, and availability, ensuring the best-qualified and closest field agent is sent to avoid delays.

    Field agents log in to accept or reroute tasks and view aircraft details, service history, and parts to be checked from the integrated asset management system. They can also view recommendations from articles and past work orders. When they complete diagnostic tasks, the system schedules the next maintenance tasks. All work order information is saved for analysis, reporting, audits, and compliance.

    With Field Service Management, Lisa ensures passenger and crew safety, boosts revenue by optimizing aircraft availability, and meets compliance needs by reviewing work order data to spot trends.

    Field Service Preventive maintenance workflow diagram

    Preventive maintenance workflow

    Field Service Preventive maintenance workflow steps

    The following table provides the steps for the Field Service preventive maintenance workflow.
    Table 1. Preventive maintenance workflow steps and descriptions
    Steps Description
    1. Define workflow The aircraft maintenance manager creates a maintenance plan and schedules maintenance, for example, so that diagnostic verification must be completed before 60 hours and more extensive checks performed every 200 hours, depending on the aircraft type.
    2. Auto-generate work orders The maintenance plan automatically creates one or more work orders when a trigger threshold is met. Templates containing the appropriate series of repeatable tasks for each aircraft type are used to create tasks for each work order. These tasks are assigned automatically to agents based on their location, availability, and skills.
    3. Notify technician The field agent is notified about the task assignment. The agent can log in to see and accept (or reroute) the task that needs to be executed to finish the maintenance diagnostic.
    4. Provide comprehensive maintenance With integrated Asset Management, the agent can see asset details, such as subcomponents, service history, and information on which parts need to be replaced or serviced. In addition, the technician can get recommendations, directions, tips from knowledge articles, and information from previous work orders to help complete the task.
    5. Complete the work order tasks Once the technician finishes the maintenance and updates the task, the next planned maintenance appointment is scheduled and assigned automatically.
    6. Provide audit trail All completed tasks and data are tracked in the maintenance plan records for future reference, so administrators can easily pull data needed for trend analysis, reports, and audits to satisfy compliance requirements.
    7. Report and analyze Track tasks and data in a maintenance plan to support future analysis, reporting, audits, and compliance activity.