The primary role of the reliability engineer is to identify and manage asset reliability risks that could adversely affect plant or business operations.
The term has its origins from the famous military standard 781 created during the 1960s. This is where more emphasis was given to reliability testing on component and system levels. Around this time the military handbook 217 was also published and was used for the prediction of failure rates of components.
Today, a good reliability engineer needs to understand total productive maintenance (TPM), is adept at analysis tools such as root cause analysis, fault tree and reliability modeling, and has a knowledge of production systems and products.
Some of the typical responsibilities of reliability engineers include:
- Data analysis, trending and other data mining to find solutions to chronic problems.
- Manage asset risk as related to health, safety and environment (HES), production, quality, regulatory compliance and cost.
- Work with the ergonomics or industrial engineer to improve maintainability using human factors.
- Take a systems-thinking approach (machinery, equipment, controls, processes, utilities, safety, environmental, people and more) to ensure reliability.
- Establish test procedures and perform reliability testing.
- Develop a reliability and maintainability (R&M) plan with measurable goals.
- Be an integral part of the design, installation and buy off of assets — for new assets and major changes to assets. This is important because over 90 percent of the lifecycle cost is decided early in a project.
- Monitor production and maintenance losses to improve throughput and reduce cost (reduce MTTR, increase MTBF and improve availability).
- Conduct a failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA).
It’s a substantial list that goes on and on. This is why reliability engineers are in great demand and receive substantial salaries. According to payscale.com, an entry-level reliability engineer with less than five years of experience can expect to earn an average total compensation of $79,000.
Normally, an ideal reliability engineer has three primary qualifications:
- A solid engineering background.
- A good overall background in R&M (reliability and maintainability engineering).
- Practical experience.
Reliability Engineering Training
Tonex offers several courses in Reliability Engineering Training. Reliability Training courses available, include:
- Reliability Engineering 101
- Reliability Engineering Principles Training for Non-Engineers
- Reliability Engineering Training for Non-Engineers
- Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Crash Course
- Risk and Reliability Engineering Training
- Applied Reliability Engineering Training
- Software Reliability Engineering Training
Courses cover key reliability engineering topics such as systems engineering, product life cycle engineering, hazard analysis, reliability management training, strategic management, quality function deployment (QFD) and failure analysis.
Who Should Attend?
These courses are perfect for production supervisors, project managers and product managers. They can also be beneficial for just about anyone who would like to learn the foundation of reliability engineering through hands-on activities and directed classroom discussion.
Why Tonex?
- Reasonably priced classes taught by the best trainers is the reason all kinds of organizations from Fortune 500 companies to government’s most important agencies return for updates in courses and hands-on workshops
- Ratings tabulated from student feedback post-course evaluations show an amazing 98 percent satisfaction score.
- For over 30 years Tonex, while presenting highly customized learning solutions, has worked with organizations in improving their understanding and capabilities in topics often with new development, design, optimization, regulations and compliances that, frankly, can be difficult to comprehend.
Contact us for more information, questions, comments.