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Supervisor handbook

Everything a supervisor needs to know to coordinate maintenance crews using Smart Maintenance Task Manager.

This handbook is for the Supervisor role

If you're not sure what role you have, open your profile in the web portal (avatar → Profile) or ask your Admin.

What you'll do with the platform

A supervisor is the routing layer between planning and execution. You look at what needs doing, decide who does it, watch as the work gets done, and quality-check the results.

Your main responsibilities:

  • Assign work — distribute today's tasks across available technicians.
  • Monitor progress — watch the dashboard for completion rates, delays, and bottlenecks.
  • Approve completions — review submitted tasks and either sign them off or send them back.
  • Triage incoming events — repair requests and shutdown reports hit your queue first.
  • Rebalance when plans change — absences, breakdowns, priority shifts.
  • Coach from data — use reports to identify patterns (high skip-scan counts, repeated rejections) and follow up with the team.

Your primary app

The web portal. Assignment and approval are much faster on a large screen; the drag-and-drop interface needs real screen real estate.

You have limited mobile access — you can scan NFC and barcodes from the mobile app to spot-check technicians in the field, but day-to-day supervision happens at a desk.

The daily rhythm

A typical supervisor shift:

Start of shift — clear the board

  1. Open the Dashboard. Check overnight completion rate, any overdue carry-overs, pending approvals, open repair requests.
  2. Open Assignments. Look at today's unassigned task volume.
  3. Check the Approvals queue — anything submitted overnight gets reviewed first, so technicians aren't blocked.
  4. Review Repair requests and Shutdowns — anything urgent goes to the top of the pile.

Mid-morning — assign the bulk of the work

See Assigning tasks for the full walkthrough. The quick version:

  1. Filter the task tree to the site and line you're covering.
  2. Drag tasks onto technicians.
  3. Watch the workload badge next to each name — keep it roughly balanced.
  4. High-priority tasks go to your most experienced technicians.

Through the shift — approvals and reassignments

  • Approvals come in continuously. Keep the queue short — technicians feel stuck when their submitted work sits uncleared.
  • Reassign as circumstances change: sickness, breakdowns, new urgent work.
  • Respond to repair requests and shutdown reports in real time.

End of shift — wrap up

  1. Clear the approvals queue so the incoming shift starts clean.
  2. Review the Completion Report for today.
  3. Note anything worth raising at the next handover (recurring issues, asset concerns, process friction).

Assigning tasks

This is the feature you'll use most. See Assigning tasks (web portal) — it's a complete walkthrough of the drag-and-drop interface.

Key patterns:

  1. Filter by Production site = (your site).
  2. Expand all.
  3. Drag entire lines onto technicians in proportion to experience and availability.
  1. Filter to the specific task type.
  2. Drag directly onto the chosen technician.
  1. Click the technician's name.
  2. Three-dot menu → Reassign all.
  3. Pick replacement.

Balance the load

The workload badge next to each technician tells you how many tasks they're currently carrying. Big imbalances mean poor throughput:

  • Under-loaded technicians finish early and stand around.
  • Over-loaded technicians rush and make mistakes.

Aim for rough parity, adjusted for experience. A veteran can carry more than a new hire — experience lets them work faster and self-dispatch when a task turns out to be a non-issue.

Approving tasks

When a technician submits a task, it enters your Approvals queue. See Approving tasks (web portal) for the workflow.

Your job when reviewing:

  1. Check the form values — are the measurements plausible? Are values inside the configured thresholds? Threshold-highlighted values (red background) deserve a second look.
  2. Check the photos — do they match the task description? Are they clear?
  3. Check the safety acknowledgements — were they tapped through in seconds, or taken seriously?
  4. Check the notes — if the technician flagged something, don't let the note get buried.

If the task is good, Approve.

If something's off, Reject with a clear reason. The technician sees the reason as a push notification and the task reopens in their list for rework.

When to reject vs. when to accept-and-coach

Reject when:

  • A measurement is missing or obviously wrong.
  • Required photos are absent or unusable.
  • A safety step is missing acknowledgement (the platform blocks this, so if it happens there's a real problem).

Accept-and-coach when:

  • Photos are technically present but could be better.
  • Notes are terse but the work is clearly done.
  • A value is near-threshold but not outside it.

Rejecting too freely drains the team. Rejecting too rarely lets quality slip. Aim somewhere firm-but-fair.

Handling repair requests

Technicians raise repair requests from the field when they find a problem. You see them in real time.

Priority guidance:

Priority Response
Critical Immediate action. Alert Admin, dispatch a qualified technician now, consider line stop.
High Same shift. Dispatch before end of day.
Medium This week. Schedule into a normal maintenance slot.
Low Next planned maintenance window.

Don't let repair requests accumulate. Old open requests become forgotten open requests. If something's been sitting low-priority for two weeks, either bump it or close it.

See Repair requests (mobile) for the submitter's view.

Handling shutdowns

A shutdown report means something stopped — a line, an asset, a safety system. You see them in real time with push notifications.

Shutdown triage:

  1. Is the shutdown planned or emergency? The report form makes this explicit.
  2. For emergencies, escalate immediately to whoever owns the asset class.
  3. Record who's working on it and expected return time.
  4. Close the shutdown when production resumes.

See Shutdowns (web portal).

Reports you'll use

Your reporting focus is operational, not strategic — you want to know what's happening now and this week.

Report When you'll use it
Dashboard Every time you open the portal.
Task Reporting Drill into individual task outcomes.
Completion Report End of shift, end of week — are we on top of the plan?
Technician Comparison When a coaching conversation comes up, or at performance review time.
Shutdown Report When digging into recurring downtime patterns.
Repair Request Report Spot assets that keep breaking.

Managers and Admins consume the strategic reports (OEE, Asset Availability, Yearly Report). See Reports (web portal).

What you can do that other roles can't

  • Assign tasks — Mappers and Admins can also assign, but it's the core of the Supervisor role.
  • Approve / reject tasks — shared with Admins.

What you can't do

  • Create, edit, or delete hierarchy or tasks (Mapper / Admin).
  • Change company-wide settings (Admin).
  • Execute tasks on mobile (Technician / Mapper).
  • Create or manage users and roles (Mapper / Admin).

See the Permissions matrix for the complete breakdown.

Common patterns and anti-patterns

Patterns that work

  • Assign early, adjust often. Don't try to plan the whole shift in ten minutes at 7am. Distribute a first wave, then rebalance as the morning progresses.
  • Clear approvals fast. Within an hour of submission is good. Anything past four hours feels unresponsive to the technician.
  • Reject with specifics. "Photo is too dark, please retake with flash" lands better than "photo not usable".
  • Watch the badge. The workload badge is your load balancer.

Patterns that cause problems

  • Assigning every task to the same reliable technician. They burn out, and the rest of the team doesn't grow.
  • Approving everything without looking. Kills data quality and erodes trust over time.
  • Letting the repair request queue grow. Old requests rot. Either act or close with a reason.
  • Ignoring the NFC skip report. Repeated skips point to a training or tag-placement issue that compounds if unaddressed.

Troubleshooting

Problem See
Can't sign in I can't log in
Dashboard values look wrong Check the date range filter — it persists across sessions
Assignment drop doesn't register See Assigning tasks › Things to watch for
Tasks I assigned aren't reaching the technician Tasks aren't showing
Real-time updates lagging Sync is stuck or failing