What Should Reliability Engineers Do? What Should They Learn? What Skills Should They Have?
How to improve organizational reliability
Now that we have good understanding of the responsibilities of reliability engineers, it's time to look at some concrete examples of how they can improve reliability within an organization.
Become an Expert in Root Cause Analysis
Companies that tend to operate primarily in a reactive maintenance mode usually do not have a lot of experience in root cause analysis. However, once a reliability team really understand root cause analysis, it will easily take off. It's important to remember to divide assets into categories according to their critical roles within the organization. Be sure to tap those maintenance technicians who can help you with problem solving to spearhead various root cause analysis processes in the long run.
Use OEE on Critical Assets
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a useful tool to measure the reliability of a single critical asset. It will help team members find and eliminate specific production losses. It is measured by considering the available operating time, operating time efficiency and product quality of a particular asset.
Unfortunately, many companies have tried to use this tool to evaluate overall facility effectiveness. It was not designed for this purpose and should not be used in that manner.
Drill Down to Mean Time Between Failures
Once reliability engineers have identified OEE measures, they can move onto to measure mean time between failures (MTBF), especially for assets found to be performing poorly. This measure is calculated by taking the total amount of time an asset is running and diving it by the number of breakdowns within a set period of time.
According to Efficient Plant Magazine, when the OEE and MTBF measures are well quantified and communicated within an organization, maintenance technicians and operators will automatically start looking for ways to affect those measurements.
Understand Where You Are on the Reliability Journey
Different companies are going to be at different levels of reliability. It's important to assess where a business’ technicians and management sit on the reliability spectrum. Conducting an internal self-assessment can help a reliability engineer determine the correct priorities and starting point for a specific company.
Transform Technicians Into Problem Solvers
Reliability engineers are charged with creating and sustaining a reliability culture. One of the best things that they can do is to train maintenance technicians to incorporate reliability thinking in their everyday work. One way to do this is to use data from a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) as well as a simple reliability process to help them tackle particular problems.
Create a few small teams, and have them identify a problem as well as potential causes. They should then work their process to determine if the potential cause is truly the root cause of the overall issue. After they practice this exercise under the guidance of a reliability engineer, they will begin to do this type of problem-solving more regularly and naturally.
Focus on Rotating Equipment
Rotating equipment is one area where many companies may have issues. Often, the surface problems that are easily seen on rotating equipment can cause extensive and expensive equipment problems. Reliability maintenance can make a huge difference in this area by using vibration data and predictive maintenance tools to check equipment alignment. Teaching maintenance technicians the correct procedures for evaluating this rotating equipment can result in significant returns.
Always Continue to Learn
Many different certifications and continuous education opportunities abound for reliability engineers. It's important to continue to grow in the career when it comes to reliability. Learning different processes and procedures as well as learning from others in the field will help reliability team members to do their jobs better in the long run. Be sure the reliability team members join the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP) and be sure to invest in annual conferences and workshops.
Review Maintenance Procedures
Once the bulk of the analysis work has been completed, the nitty-gritty daily work must follow. Chances are that reliability engineers will need to work with maintenance technicians to rewrite most of a company’s maintenance procedures. Select a reasonable goal and walk them through an example. During this process, it’s likely that words such as "check this and that" will need to be changed to clearly define measurements and resulting actions. As always, start with critical assets and handle them one by one.
Understand Lubrication Issues and Postpone If Appropriate
Although it's likely that accompanies lubrication program will need to be overhauled, experts suggest that this resource-intensive project should be tackle a little bit farther down the priority list. It's important to prove that reliability programs will generate return on investment early on. Save the more extensive and expensive programs for a time when management and technician buy-in is well-established
A Closer Look at Lubrication
Once a mature, accepted reliability program has been built, it’s definitely worth the effort to take a closer look at lubrication. Consider that every component that moves in a plant or facility will experience friction and wear, and that metal parts are separated only by a minute amount of oil. However, achieving the correct level of lubrication for as many assets as possible can be overwhelming. Reliability engineers can help organizations strike the balance between ensuring critical assets remain properly lubricated without overly investing in an expensive preventive maintenance processes and procedures.
Invest in Training a Lubrication Team
Perhaps the most important aspect of creating a reliability program for lubrication is to have trained, experienced lubrication technicians and managers. Industry organizations such as the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) or the International Council of Machinery Lubrication (ICML) can help a team acquire the technical expertise they need in this area. Here are some key areas where expertise is required:
Condition Monitoring
Teach technicians how to use predictive technologies to monitor the conditions of critical assets so they can suggest cost-effective solutions.
Vibration Monitoring
Companies that operate rotating equipment can use vibration analysis to track the condition of the critical assets. This tool can not only help in terms of identifying lubrication tasks but can also signal other conditions such as alignment issues.
Thermal Imaging And Oil Analysis
Besides using vibration analysis, thermal imaging and oil analysis are two other common tools that can help reliability engineers to optimize their system and extend the life cycle of critical assets.
Root Cause Failure Analysis
Understanding RCFA is critical to prevent future failures and get to the true cause of asset problems. Take this training one step further and learn about reliability-centered maintenance, which is completely proactive. Preventive maintenance optimization programs must be applied to lubrication within most companies.
Share Impact of Poor Practices
Be sure to communicate the consequences of poor repair practices. When technicians understands that sub par work on aligning shafts or mounting bearings can result in significant expense and large problems, they may appreciate the reliability practices at a new level.
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As companies and multiple industries have started to understand the importance of improving the function of assets, the position of a reliability engineer has become commonplace. Reliability engineers are responsible for identifying and managing asset reliability risks and then working to reduce those risks. Depending on the industry and market, reliability engineers have the opportunity to affect multiple assets and processes. Specific skills and tasks may vary significantly from company to company, but it will typically include measuring performance of critical assets, identifying root causes for failures, managing related data, and implementing maintenance tasks to improve reliability.
What Do Reliability Engineers Do?
The role of most reliability engineers can be subdivided into three main areas: elimination of losses, management of risks, and life cycle asset management.
Elimination of Losses
Often, one of the first jobs of a reliability engineer, or even the reason for the creation of that position in the first place, is to examine production losses and inspect assets that are racking up extremely high maintenance costs. The reliability engineer, working with management and operations, leads the effort to discover the root cause of these losses and then create a plan for eliminating them. Priority is placed on the most critical assets and establishing or improving a predictive and preventive maintenance plan is usually involved.
Management of Risks
Reliability engineers are also responsible for managing health, safety, and environmental risks as well as anything that could negatively affect asset capability, product quality, and production capacity.
Many types of tools are available that can help reliability engineers manage this part of the job, including failure modes and effects analyses, fault tree analyses, and preliminary hazards analyses.
Life Cycle Asset Management
Reliability engineers may also be called upon to help design, install, and modify assets, in order to minimize the total cost of ownership. They help create the guidelines for external MRO suppliers, as well as set inspection and review procedures. By systematically implementing the reliability plan, reliability engineers can shepherd value-added preventive maintenance tasks, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of predictive maintenance initiatives.
Periodically, reliability engineers must update management on anticipated risks that could cause a negative impact within the organization. During an oral presentation or within written reports, possible solutions should be presented that would eliminate anticipated and repeated failures of critical assets. This may include issues around capacity, regulatory issues, or quality. Often, the reliability engineer will use tools such as root cause failure analysis to make these determinations.
What Skills Are Needed?
Perhaps the number one skill a reliability engineer needs to have is the ability to learn. Every asset failure is an opportunity to problem-solve, both in the short term and the long term. Over time, an organization will gather the data needed to make better and smarter reliability decisions. Here are some general categories of skills that will be helpful for a reliability engineer.
Basic Engineering
Reliability engineers should understand the basic premises of electronic, electrical, mechanical, software, and system engineering. Reliability engineers can be pulled from the ranks of those team members who have an engineering degree or background. Many continuing education programs are available for those non-engineers who would like to obtain introductory knowledge.
People Skills
By learning to actively listen to coworkers, technicians, and managers, reliability engineers can better understand overall issues and problems. Once root causes of failures are determined and a plan is drawn up, reliability engineers must be able to be persuasive in both written and oral communications, as well as have excellent presentation skills. These skills are critical to successfully implementing preventive maintenance tasks and programs with the needed management and organizational buy-in.
Statistical Modeling and Data Analysis
Reliability engineers need to understand how to use statistical tools to create models, which can help them design better maintenance solutions. In addition, reliability engineers should know how to analyze data to make smarter decisions, as well as to illustrate the value of reliability processes and programs.
Material and System Modeling and Analysis
In some cases, reliability engineers will need to understand how particular materials and systems behave under different circumstances and environmental conditions. For instance, temperature, pressure, humidity and a host of other factors can positively or negatively affect the reliability of a particular asset or production line. Having this knowledge or relying on a reliability team member to handle this component of the program is extremely useful.
Root Cause Analysis
Getting to the root cause of a particular problem is critical to reliability engineering. While reactive maintenance is typically focused on resolving the immediate problem as quickly as possible, predictive and preventive maintenance tasks are much more focused on improving the reliability of a particular asset or process. Successful proactive programs can only be built if reliability engineers can find the root cause of the problem.
Business Skills
It's important for reliability engineers to get past the technical details of maintenance and operations. Reliability engineers must be able to communicate the impact of these reliability issues to management and decision-makers. Understanding the correlation between reliability data to overall business objectives is critical to a successful career in this area. Reliability engineers must be able to translate the work they are doing into language that’s understandable and important to the management team.
Customer Awareness
Remember that customer satisfaction and success is the end goal for any business. As a reliability engineer, it's important to understand what end-users or customers want, the problems they have, and how reliability contributes to the solutions your company delivers. This customer focus will help reliability engineers illustrate the value of their work to the management team as well.
Typical Job Description of a Reliability Engineer
Once reliability engineers have obtained at least some of the above skills with the eye to continuing to develop the skills they do not yet have, they can consider jumping on a reliability team or taking over the responsibilities of a reliability engineer at an organization.
Although job descriptions for reliability engineers will vary across industries and companies, here are some common hats that a reliability engineer may wear.
Champion of Life Cycle Asset Management
Reliability engineers may work with other relevant departments to make sure that new and modified assets meet reliability standards through a predetermined process.
Developer, Installer, Commissioner
These individuals may help to create guidelines and evaluation of external service providers, ensuring that third-party vendors follow the internally established reliability processes and procedures in the products and services they are providing.
Final Checkpoint for Upholding Reliability Standards
Reliability engineers may be involved in the last stages of new installations to ensure reliability standards are met.
Creator of Asset Maintenance Plan
People in this position may help ensure that preventive maintenance tasks, as well as predictive maintenance processes are put in place once issue identification and failure causes have been identified.
Risk Monitor and Reporter
Reliability engineers may keep an eye on potential risks as they relate to safety, environmental issues, and production problems. They may be responsible for providing feedback to management, as well as making suggestions for solutions to mitigate those risks.
Problem Solver
These individuals may be the point people who employ statistical controls, fault tree analysis, and other reliability modeling tools in order to create solutions to potential problems revolving around quality, capacity, or compliance.
Production Analyzer
Reliability engineers may work with production staff to analyze critical asset utilization, the remaining useful life of assets, and overall equipment effectiveness.
Technical Supporter
They may help deliver reliability information to production, management, and technical staff on an ongoing basis, which may involve providing analyses to help these teams make decisions on whether to repair or replace a particular asset.