Who Are We?

Reliability is rapidly gaining acceptance as an active partner with maintenance in the minds of people responsible for equipment asset management and plant capacity. Perhaps it is the results of the formation of the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) which included both maintenance and reliability in its name. Or, perhaps it is the result of the successful deployment of reliability centered maintenance (RCM), a methodology for determining maintenance requiements. There may be other explanations as well.

In any event, reliability is a much more common word in the titles of conference papers and magazine articles this year. And a number of maintenance managers are trading in their business card for new ones that read Reliability Managers. (Does that mean they are doing their jobs differently now?) The speed at which people are becoming reliability managers reminds me of the old cartoon of the nerd at graduation with the caption: "Four years ago I couldn't even spell engineer, now I are one."

Just what is a maintenance and reliability manager? What knowledge and skills must that person possess? What attitudes and philosophies make that person a professional? That is exactly what SMRP's Professional Certification Committee (PCC) is trying to find out. The committee's objective: To create an industry-recognized competency and knowledge standard for maintenance and reliability professionals, by developing an educational system to teach the stands and a certifying mechanism to recognize their applications.

The PCC has initially organized the core competencies worth measuring into three categories:
• Work process reliability, covering business processes such as financial and resource management and work processes such as management of work, materials, and contracts.
• Manufacturing reliability, covering equipment reliability and process reliability.
• People reliability, covering leadership, development, communications, and performance management. We applaud this activity. In fact, we are participating on the committee. And we invite your participation.

If you have developed job descriptions or performance requirements that may help the committee define the core competencies of maintenance and reliability professionals, we invite you to send them to us at MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY so we can share them with the committee.

Regular reflection on who you are and hwat you do is a valuable exercise whether or not you share your reflections with the committee. MT