A maintenance schedule says what will be done and a maintenance card says what was done; without the second the schedule is a statement of intent. A card line fills in this order: equipment number, date, work done (check, replacement or repair), code and quantity of the replaced part, the name of the person who did it, and the date and owner of the next check. The next date comes from the equipment's maintenance instructions and the site's maintenance plan.
Keeping a short record on the container and the full one in a central file solves both access in the field and the risk of losing the card. If one line is enough, do not write a paragraph: a five-word entry beats three sentences never written. A filled card serves as evidence of a maintenance routine in a damage file and as data on how often each part is replaced when ordering spares.
