There are many paths to becoming a reliability engineer.
If you are good with statistics, enjoy the detective work of failure analysis, or simply want to create a durable long lasting product, you likely found yourself in a reliability engineering role.
A science or engineering background is a great start. Time spent working with a design or maintenance team certainly help. An advanced degree in reliability engineering is another path. Continue reading
We often present proposals and reports. We talk about the plan or results. We want funding, approval, or action. We need excellent presentation skills.
Excellent communication skills is often on job openings. It is not there by chance. Your ability to communicate well, especially via presentations is vital for your success and the success of your reliability program. Continue reading
The role of a reliability engineer is to support the other engineers and managers as they make decisions concerning reliability.
Our ability may be well honed and effective. Or it may be fumbling or annoying. It is our ability to communicate along with our technical ability that determine our ability to influence well.
We may do analysis or testing. We follow up on failures and evaluate suppliers. What we actually are doing is influencing decisions. Continue reading
Your peers, team mates, and management want to understand your writing. They want to quickly get your point, find supporting information, and take action.
As a reliability engineer, you write proposals, plans, and reports. You write problem statements, failure analysis findings, recommended process improvements, and much more.
You write to document a process or plan. More often you write to encourage others to take action. Continue reading
Did you hear what they said? Or, were you busy loading for your next verbal barrage?
As my mother would remind me, one should listen twice of often as speaking. Something about the ratio of ears to mouths in the population. I have to agree with her, that one can learn a lot by listening.
Listening may not seem to be a skill that one needs to master. Yet, how often have you walked away from a meeting where one or more participants obviously were not listening? How often are points repeated in an effort to be heard? Continue reading