We have had some contacts and request from students who are considering careers in maintenance and reliability recently. Can any forum members provide advice on how to best prepare?

Any suggestions for where the future sweet spots will be in terms of money? What positions or skill sets will be the most valuable 5-10 years from now?

What would you tell your own child about becoming a maintenance and reliability professional?

Terry O

Wow mike,,, just wow.
I would say the future is in the integration of maintenance into smart systems that increase efficiency and reduce stock on the shelves. I would recommend heavy stats, math, and computer/ database skills. Nobody cares about maintenance, they care about production. Find ways to improve production through maintenance.

Know up front, it's not a question of if you will be outsourced, laid off, or otherwise let go. The question is when. Plan accordingly.

Work for knowledge, pay will follow.
If you don't do something to improve your resume every year, the when is sooner and harder to get over.

Find passion in the nitch that suits you, find the edge of existing technology and pick jobs that build roads beyond that.

MikeH et al,
I agree that perception is reality, but it will be a sad state of affairs if fluff is all that people need to progress.
In a different thread, there was a lot of breast-beating about loss of jobs to the emerging giants. Manufacturing is rapidly moving into China, and IT and BPO to India are booming. Some work cannot be outsourced in a big way, maintenance being one of them. But chunks of reliability can be, and if we keep the focus on fluff, that will happen, sooner or later. All the 'perceptions' of glory will follow the reality that sub-prime markets have suffered.
I do not doubt the validity of your advice to the young-uns. Is it not time that the leaders woke up to reality? If they don't change course, prepare for some further drubbing.

I Agree with John - do something you are interested in. I think you will find it is easier to absorb information that goes along with your interests - Are you interested in the nuts and bolts of things or are you really organized and like to communicate ? Use this inner stregnth to jump start your education then branch out into other subjects in the field.

Remember,it takes a lot of energy to get that flywheel started turning but once it does it is easier to maintain its momentum.

Dont make the mistake in thinking your education will stop, it will be a constant process.

MikeH,

I have no doubt that Perception is Reality; most important decisions are made based on perception, even if it is given a sugar coating of logical thinking. So we are on the same page.

In my experience, Maintenance and Reliability people are very poor at marketing themselves. I don't mean this in the sense of hype or creating an aura, rather something more down to earth. We seem to lack the ability to explain the results of our efforts. We do not take the effort to measure the benefits, and often don't know the cost of our effort. We think that the fruits of our labor are so obvious it does not need recording or explanation. In fact this is the absolute minimum one must do if one is to market oneself.

In every training course I run, I spend a couple of hours explaining
- how to go about implementing the work
- how to measure costs and benefits, and how to report the success

So my view is also that we must 'market' ourselves, but using the results of our work to show how we make a difference, especially to the bottom-line. I don't suggest we go for mere gloss and polish: truth will out soon enough.

Get exposure and practical experience on plants as soon as possible. Try to get a well-rounded work experience in maintenance, operations, projects and reliability. A training and development plan is important.

Here are some word of advice and caution I would give to a young person in collage about the reliability and maintenance profession (by no means an exhaustive list):
1) It will often be challenging, but usually very rewarding.
2) It will not be glamorous, and will require hard work.
3) There will be few easy solutions, and some problems will have to be left unsolved.
4) Your biggest obstacles will be people, not technology.
5) There will always be enough work to keep you engaged and challenged.
6) Be patient.

When I started my maintenance career, I honestly believed that everyone in the plant(s) where I worked wanted the same thing I did: more reliable equipment and eventually lower cost product as a result. I thought that people would instantly agree with reliability initiatives and together we would tackle the difficult equipment problems. I figured turning a plant around would take a few years, at the most.
Whoops! In retrospect, I was naïve and I think we do the young technicians and engineers that enter in this profession (and those associated with it) a disservice by planting unrealistic expectations in their heads, or allowing these expectations to flourish. I would have been a little more realistic in my expectations if someone had taken the time to review the above with me. (Though maybe not by much, given the arrogance of youth
In reality, I found that most people had their own agenda that was completely unrelated to reliability, be it a monthly production record or leaving right at quitting time to go hunting, regardless of the quality of work that was left behind. In reality, the technical problems were easy and getting people to “buy in” to new ways of doing business was the challenge. Turning a plant around takes a change in mentality, upper management support, funding for improvements and a host of other items I hadn’t previously considered. In my case, my expectation of how quickly change would happen set me up for some disillusionment.
But, I also found a job where, with enough elbow grease, persistence, technical support and sometimes sheer stubbornness, significant improvements can be made and enjoyed year after year. There is great pleasure to be found in implementing solutions to problems and seeing the benefits in the following years. Be it the fan impeller with reduced wear due to your team’s recommendation or an increase in production, uptime, and specific energy consumption of a system that simply “had to” run reliably this year. It is rewarding to be able to see what is now compared to what used to be, even if it takes years to show itself.
If the students are not afraid of hard work and are interested in changing plants, procedures and, yes even people, for the better, then they have found in the maintenance and reliability profession a viable and enjoyable career option. If it wasn't worth it, I wouldn't be doing it.

I have found that maintenance techs are moving toward a computer based society of their own making. Not too many are willing to climb into a pile of grease to make their equipment more reliable. Sometimes, the best comes as a result of the worst. In other words, everyone wantint to enter a reliability field must be aware of how basic machinery works. They need to know how to align couplings, what a small variance in the operation of a steam trap looks like on a thermocamera, and how a bearing sounds when it is starting to fail. I have been through the ranks, and in looking back, can see where we are today verses 10, 15 or even more years ago.
Production results drive maintenance. Without the end product paying the bills, we would not be there. As such, the entry level tech needs to have a good background in inter-personal skills. That willingness to see the other side of a decision allows them to be the most productive.
Please let them have a firm foundation in basic lubrication, often I have seen too much grease cause a massive failure. Other than that, I guess they must be flexiable.

For what it is worth here is the advice I recently gave to a nephew:

1. Understand and apply the fundamentals. People always seem to forget the foundation upon which the rest of the function is built. Don't think that you can short cut your way to performance (note that I didn't say success, I said performance).

2.Take a big picture view. The enterprise you work for is a business. You need to understand how you add to the business results and work to do that continually.

3. Be a leader. Too many people are interested in saying how great they are or how things ought to be but don't do anything. Leaders work to change things for the better. They undertsand that they must start with their sphere of influence and they must set the example for others.

4 Learn continuosly. Take every opprotunity to train, learn from others, read and so on.

Time will tell whether this was good advice!