Holds & the Hold Board

A hold is a flag that says this job is stuck, and here is why. It does not change the work order’s stage — the job keeps its place in the lifecycle while the hold explains the delay. Open holds show as a count in the work order list, and every open hold in the shop lands on the Hold Board.

Placing a hold

On the work order record, the Holds section has an inline form:

Pick the reason from the dropdown (the nine reasons below).
Optionally type a short Detail — “waiting on O-ring kit”, “customer reviewing quote”.
Click Hold.

The hold appears in the table with its reason pill, detail, and placed date — and on the Hold Board.

The nine hold reasons

Reason	In shop terms
`AWAITING_PARTS`	Material shortage. Also placed automatically by Material Readiness when a work order is short after reserving.
`AWAITING_CUSTOMER_APPROVAL`	The customer must say yes before work continues — over-and-above findings, scope changes.
`AWAITING_QUOTE_APPROVAL`	The quote is out and unanswered; the bench waits.
`AWAITING_OUTSIDE_PROCESSING`	The unit or its parts are at an outside vendor — plating, NDT, cal.
`AWAITING_TECH_DATA`	Missing manuals or technical data — no CMM revision, no drawing, no spec.
`AWAITING_TOOLING`	The required tooling or fixture isn’t available.
`QUALITY_ESCAPE`	A quality problem was found — stop and contain before continuing.
`CREDIT_HOLD`	A commercial stop: the customer’s account is blocked.
`OTHER`	Anything else — say why in the detail.

An AWAITING_PARTS hold and the AWAITING_PARTS stage are independent: the hold flags the blockage without moving the job; the stage says where the job sits in its lifecycle. Many shops use both together.

Releasing a hold

When the blocker clears, release the hold — from either end:

On the work order record, click Release on the hold’s row. Released holds stay in the table marked “Released”, so the job’s delay history is preserved.
On the Hold Board, click Release on the row — no need to open the work order.

The Hold Board

Work Orders → Hold Board in the sidebar is the shop’s stuck-work radar: every open hold, grouped by reason, with the most-stuck group first and the longest-held job at the top of each group.

Screen: The Hold Board. A header reads “Hold board” with a pill showing the total open count. Below, one block per hold reason — a reason pill plus “3 holds · longest 12d” — each with a table of the held work orders: WO chip, customer, stage pill, detail, promised and placed dates, a days-held pill colored by the hold’s severity, and a Release button per row. When nothing is held, the board reads “No open holds — the floor is clear.”

How to read it:

Group order — the reason whose oldest hold has waited longest leads the page. That is the bottleneck to attack first.
Days held — the pill on each row counts days since the hold was placed and is colored by the hold’s severity.
The WO chip on each row jumps straight to the work order record.
Promised sits next to the hold dates so you can see which held jobs threaten their promise date.

Make the Hold Board the first screen of the morning meeting: it answers “what is stuck, why, for how long, and what do we unblock today?” in one glance.

Roles: Anyone with Work Orders access can place and release holds; APEX records who placed each one. Reserve QUALITY_ESCAPE and CREDIT_HOLD to the people who own those calls — QA and the front office respectively.