Any one got a sample job specification out there? I suspect it will vary from industry to industry but surely there must be some commonality?

This is probably not what you expected by after careful consideration you'll realize it is very accurate. It is from a Help Wanted advertisement from the New York Times of 2 January 1972. I have carried it for years as my "job description." Enjoy.

John from PA

Engineer

Personable, well-educated, literate individual with college degree in any form of Engineering or Physics to work for a small firm. Long hours, no fringe benefits, no security, little chance for advancement are among the inducements offered. Job requires wide knowledge & experience in physical sciences, materials, construction techniques, mathematics, and drafting. Competence in the use of spoken and written English is required. Must be willing to suffer personal indignities from clients, professional derision from peers in more conventional jobs, and slanderous insults from colleagues.

Job involves frequent physical danger, trips to inaccessible locations throughout the world, manual labor and extreme frustration from lack of data on which to base decisions.

Applicant must be willing to risk personal and professional future on decisions based on inadequate information and complete lack of control over acceptance of recommendations by clients. Responsibilities for work are unclear and little or no guidance is offered. Authority commensurate with responsibility is not provided either by the firm or its clients.

Applicant should send resume, list of publications, references and other supporting documentation to Donley, Miller & Nowikas, consulting acoustical engineers, 296 State Highway 10 in East Hanover, NJ 07936.

Although not as good as John's job description, I do have a copy of this definition for engineer hanging in my cubicle.

Engineer - An individual who is able to produce, with prolific abandon, streams of incomprehensible formulae based upon extremely vague assumptions and theories based on debatable figures acquired from inconclusive tests and incomplete experiements, carried out with instruments of problematic accurary by persons of doubtful reliability and rather dubious mentality with the particular anticipation of disconcerting and annoying everyone outside of their own profession.

Gentlemen,
Got a good smile from your posts - thanks for that. Great to see there are people out there with a sense of humour!!
Now is there anyone else out there with something like a sample job spec for a Reliability engineer?

At my previous job, it seemed that all the engineers were promoted to their highest level of incompetency. In other words, they were made department heads.

The RE will review PM's and ensure correctness. Also be in charge of the lube program, IR and PdM. He will operate as the chief analyst and provide technical support implementing a planned scheduled maintenance program. RCA will be an intregal part of his/her function. Must be able to recognize craft ineffeciencies and either provide or recommend training.

quote:

Originally posted by Sam Pickens:
The RE will review PM's and ensure correctness. Also be in charge of the lube program, IR and PdM. He will operate as the chief analyst and provide technical support implementing a planned scheduled maintenance program. RCA will be an intregal part of his/her function. Must be able to recognize craft ineffeciencies and either provide or recommend training.

I will send to my chief this description may be he understand me now

thanks

My job description includes:
[LIST]

Establish and apply reliability principles, methods, and tools such as RCM, FMEA, RCA, Weibull Analysis, etc., to improve system reliability and availability.

Utilize and optimize CMMS/EAM system for work control, data management, trending, performance measures, and asset history.

Integrate engineering and maintenance in areas such as PdM, PM, and Design for Maintainability.

Provide leadership and education in RCM principles and PdM technologies.

Develop business cases, cost savings reports, and communicate with management.

Best of luck,
Shelley

Shelley,

quote:

Integrate engineering and maintenance in areas such as PdM, PM, and Design for Maintainability.

I would suggest that 'Integration' with Operations is quite important to any reliability improvement effort. I see three areas of specific importance; Operational Philosophies,Operating Practices and Work Scheduling.

Focusing on team work can do bring in faster and more sustainable results than techniques or tools.

Vee,
You are absolutely right. In my case, maintenance and operations are one in the same because we are in the Facilities organization in our company. We coordinate and integrate with our internal customers, the tenants using the facilities, for outage scheduling. We also include our customers on our RCM teams. Because I am not in a typical manufacturing environment, "operations" has a slightly different meaning here.

Ray,

You might also try doing a job search on Monster.com or ReliabilityCareers.com and see what others are posting as job descriptions for Reliability Engineers.

Shelley