How many reliability engineers does it take to replace a light bulb? Well, none, but that’s because reliability engineers would use a reliable bulb to avoid the need for replacement.
Of more importance is answering the question ‘How many reliability engineers does an organization need?’ Is it
(a) none,
(b) one really good reliability engineering professional, or
(c) an entire staff of highly talented reliability engineers?
Depending on the circumstances, any of these answers would be the right one. The number of reliability engineers on staff really doesn’t matter. The outcome of your product and system reliability is not contingent on headcount or office space or list of degrees. Reliability performance is a function of the many decisions, both large and small, that go into the design, development, manufacture, and operation of the item.
A reliability engineer doesn’t make all of those decisions, if any.
Why Hire Reliability Engineers?
There are two reasons to hire reliability engineers and neither directly improves your product’s reliability performance.
- Reliability professionals bring experience, tools, and techniques that allow your organization to
- set clear reliability goals,
- identify reliability risks,
- estimate future reliability performance, and
- interpret test and field reliability data.
In essence, reliability professionals enable others within an organization to make informed decisions, illuminating the often talked about yet vague world of reliability performance.
- Reliability professionals can change the culture in your organization. By helping others make solid decisions, they take an important concept (reliability performance) out of the realm of vague objective, moving it into reality.
As the engineers and managers in your organization realize the many benefits of considering reliability information to make decisions, they adopt a new mindset: an approach that seeks and uses the best available data and information to make decisions.
Should You Hire More Than One?
Maybe you should. There is no guarantee that the sole reliability engineer will have the necessary skills to teach, mentor, and encourage those in your organization to make better decisions using reliability engineering concepts. Maybe the first hiree will become overwhelmed by the enormity of the tasks.
Suitable reliability performance doesn’t happen at one desk or meeting. It happens at every desk and meeting. The ability of one person to influence decisions across the design and development team, the supply chain management and marketing teams, and the maintenance and field service teams while possible is unlikely. A small team of reliability professionals can exert this influence.
Who Is the Best Reliability Engineering Hire?
It is not necessarily a reliability engineer, in my opinion. A good mechanical or software engineer can learn the necessary reliability engineering tools and techniques. In addition, eventually all of the engineering and technical staff will learn and use reliability engineering concepts such as goals and apportionment, risk identification, reliability modeling, and data analysis.
The best hire for your reliability program is a person that has the ability to explain the benefits of making good decisions using reliability information. They may need to
- understand which tools to use to get started;
- help find or create reliability information;
- teach and encourage using reliability in every decision; and
- demonstrate making informed decisions.
The best reliability engineers I know do not have ‘reliability engineer’ as a title. They did have a deep understanding of the concepts and a drive to enable and encourage others to do likewise.
If product reliability is important to your customers and your business, you need everyone in your organization to understand reliability engineering tools and concepts. You need the entire staff to make informed decisions that lead to achieving the desired reliability results.
Bio:
Fred Schenkelberg is an experienced reliability engineering and management consultant with his firm FMS Reliability. His passion is working with teams to create cost-effective reliability programs that solve problems, create durable and reliable products, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce warranty costs. If you enjoyed this articles consider subscribing to the ongoing series at Accendo Reliability.