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What does it really mean to be a reliability

engineer today?
New technologies and data demands are evolving the skills that a reliability engineer
needs to succeed.

By Michael Blanchard, P.E., CRE, Life Cycle Engineering

May 07, 2019

Look up reliability engineer (RE) jobs on Indeed.com and you’ll find more than 20,000 openings listed. I would
argue that emerging technologies are driving some of this huge demand for REs; this raises some questions.
Has the role of the manufacturing plant RE changed? What new skills and competencies are required, and what
do REs need to do to stay on top of the changes and continue their vital role in managing the life cycle of
assets?

Fundamentals of the RE role

Building strategic partnerships – The reliability program cannot function effectively and achieve its goals in a
vacuum. Its success depends on support from key partners across functional areas, including operations,
maintenance, quality, design engineering, information technology, materials management, procurement, and
EHS. The RE must develop and nurture strategic partnerships to achieve maximum results.

Read "6 attributes to look for when you hire your next reliability engineer"

Root-cause failure analysis (RCFA) – This has been the sledgehammer in the RE’s toolbox, and I don’t see
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that changing. The RE’s RCFA responsibilities include:

Developing and updating trigger criteria for RCFA Join

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Preparing for the subsequent analyses, including by conducting thorough preliminary investigations,
gathering evidence, identifying the right team members, and interviewing witnesses insights fo
Selecting the most appropriate tools to facilitate the analysis and validate the probable root causes (5 whys
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analysis, design/application review, Ishikawa [fishbone] diagrams, sequences of events, fault tree analysis,
change analysis, FMEA, event and causal factor analysis) Country

Identifying and evaluating solutions to prevent failure recurrence

Verifying solutions
 Documenting and leveraging results of changes enacted

Proactive root-cause analysis, on the other hand, has changed – we’ll get to that in a bit.

Leading teams – The RE must be able to facilitate RCFAs and lead reliability-centered maintenance (RCM)
activities and change initiatives. This requires cultivating competency in leading people, managing tasks, and
facilitating decisions.

Life cycle asset management (LCAM) – REs have responsibilities for optimizing each phase of the asset life
cycle, beginning at conceptual design and continuing through shutdown and decommissioning.

Concept – facilitating/engaging in design for reliability and maintainability, comparing design options

Create/acquire – Configuration management, commission plan, install for reliability

Operate and maintain – the risk plan, operating plan, maintenance plan, capital plan

Decommission and dispose – the decommissioning plan and the asset disposal process

Management of change (MOC) – In my experience, many reliability problems result from design issues and
uncontrolled changes. The RE is the process owner of this best practice used to ensure that safety,
environmental, and value stream risks are controlled when an organization makes changes to its facilities,
documentation, personnel, or operations.

About the Author: Michael

Blanchard
Michael Blanchard is a reliability
engineering subject-matter expert at
Life Cycle Engineering. He has more
than 25 years’ experience as a
reliability leader in a variety of
industries. Blanchard is a licensed
PE, a CRE, and a certified Lean-Six
Sigma Master Black Belt. Contact him
at mblanchard@LCE.com.

Risk management – REs are risk managers and will continue to apply a risk-based asset management (RBAM)
strategy across the entire life cycle of an asset, minimizing risk to the value stream. Many RBAM competencies
remain the same. REs apply a risk-based approach to asset maintenance and operations; prioritize reliability
efforts on critical equipment and failures that impact operations; and incorporate RCM principles to decrease Th
downtime, lower maintenance expenditures, and minimize total cost of ownership.
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Asset condition monitoring, however, has changed – we’ll get to that in a bit, too.
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Continuous improvement (CI) – REs spearhead efforts to improve performance using plan-do-check-act
(PDCA) methodology, data mining and modeling, and advanced analytics. CI competencies that have not
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changed include:
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Opportunity identification

Measurement of defective performance

 Proactive root-cause analysis process

Cost/benefit analysis of improvements

Sustainability

Click here to read "The new parts of the RE's job: PdM strategy and the IoT"

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