Each fall we survey a sample of our readers to gather information about their pay and how it relates to their age, experience, job responsibilities, industry, and other characteristics. This year's results are outlined in "2000 Survey of Maintenance Salaries" which begins on page 29. The results are congruent with previous years. Although the numbers change from year to year, patterns remain similar.

We also gather reader opinions in other areas. This year we investigated the relative importance of various reliability and maintenance issues such as installing CMMS, training, predictive maintenance, spare parts management, contract service management, maintenance work planning, safety and environment, and dealing with upper management.

The questionnaire asked the reader to "indicate the relative emphasis or effort being expended by you and your department in the following areas".

Survey participants were asked to provide answers for their personal effort and for department emphasis using the following scale: 4 = emergency priority, 3 = major effort, 2 = considerable effort, 1 = routine, under control, and 0 = none.

The reliability and maintenance issues on the questionnaire, arranged here in decreasing importance by the simple average of respondent scores, were:

• Responding to challenging health, environmental, or safety issues. Average score was 1.79, with 29 percent of respondents stressed by major effort (3 or 4) and 49 percent of respondents OK, having this area under control (0 or 1).
• Improving work planning and job scheduling systems and processes (1.64 score, 20 percent stressed, 49 percent OK).
• Finding and training reliability and maintenance employees (1.53 score, 19 percent stressed, 47 percent OK).
• Installing or improving condition monitoring or predictive maintenance systems and processes (1.50 score, 20 percent stressed, 52 percent OK).
• Developing improved strategies and processes and negotiating with upper management (1.44 score, 16 percent stressed, 54 percent OK).
• Improving parts procurement and inventory management systems and processes (1.35 score, 13 percent stressed, 59 percent OK).
• Installing or improving CMMS, EAM, or other information systems (1.25 score, 16 percent stressed, 61 percent OK).
• Managing and directing contract service providers (1.23 score, 11 percent stressed, 66 percent OK).

By all measures, the spotlight is on safety, health, and the environment. Are you comfortable with your focus? MT