Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes dependability in the lifecycle management of a product. Dependability, or reliability, describes the ability of a system or component to function understated conditions for a specified period of time.
The primary role of the reliability engineer is to identify and manage asset reliability risks that could adversely affect plant or business operations. This broad primary role can be divided into three smaller, more manageable roles: Loss Elimination, Risk Management and Life Cycle Asset Management (LCAM).
Losses can and most likely will occur at one point or another during operations but by no means should this become the status quo. Loss elimination is one of the fundamental roles of the reliability engineer. This involves tracking production losses and abnormally high maintenance cost assets, then find ways to reduce those losses or high costs. These losses are prioritized to focus efforts on the largest/most critical opportunities. The reliability engineer develops a plan to eliminate or reduce the losses through root cause analysis (RCA), obtains approval of the plan and facilitates the implementation.
A reliability engineer’s job also includes managing risk to the achievement of an organization’s strategic objectives in the areas of environmental health and safety, asset capability, quality and production. There are specific tools used in reliability engineering to identify and reduce risk, such as:
- Fault tree analysis (FTA)
- Maintainability information (MI)
- Preliminary hazards analysis (PHA)
- Criticality analysis (CA)
- Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
- Simplified failure modes and effects analysis (SFMEA)
Life cycle asset management is the third job responsibility of reliability engineers. Various studies indicate that up to 95 percent of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or Life Cycle Cost (LCC) of an asset is determined before it is put into use. This reveals the need for the reliability engineer to be involved in the design and installation stages of projects for new assets and modification of existing assets.
Reliability Engineering Training
Tonex offers several courses in 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.
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
These courses are especially designed 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?
— 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.
— Ratings tabulated from student feedback post-course evaluations show an amazing 98 percent satisfaction score.
–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
Contact us for more information, questions, comments.