Efficient Plant May 2020 - 31

Answers to questions
facing today's reliability
& maintenance
professionals

Q
A

What are engineering students saying about reliability?

Four reliability and maintainability
(R&M) related questions were posed
to four students at the Reliability and
Maintainability Center, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville. Students were Angelique
(recent Industrial Engineering graduate),
Luke (Electrical Engineering & Computer
Science), and Nabeel and Noah (Mechanical Engineering). Their responses are
summarized and combined.
Why is/was Reliability & Maintainability Engineering a good career choice for
College of Engineering students?
	 Gives a good behind-the-scenes look at
how facilities and processes work, their roles,
and importance to the company.
	 Great way to work with people in different departments and levels.
	 Students will use their problem-solving
skills in any project that they are tasked.
	 It applies to every field of engineering.
	 Every machine or device is going to
require maintenance at some point in its
life cycle and understanding how best to
maintain that machine will allow higher
production rates and longer lifetime.
	 Provided experience of working in a
plant to combat the consistent struggle of
downtime, the replacement of motors and
gearboxes too soon, and parts-room reorganization utilizing applications such as 5S and
Lean operations.
How do you think you will be able to
apply R&M in your first job (these
students have had work internships)?

MAY 2020	

EP2005onthefloor.indd 31

department | on the floor

	 Focus on creating a system that works
correctly and has design features that will
perform to or beyond expectations.
	 Many of the tools and skills learned in
R&M can be applied to a first job. They are
valuable and cross functional (departments
and fields of work). The mindset of being
proactive, as opposed to reactive, is effective
in any work setting.
	 R&M has taught me not to just keep
replacing the same broken part but looking
deeper by performing a root-cause analysis
to determine why the failure is occurring
and how to prevent a repeat failure.
	 By having a core understanding of R&M
and its value in the workplace, along with 5S,
I was able to restructure/consolidate a parts
room to increase productivity of the maintenance crew and reduce downtime.

Reliability
Engineering
Students
Share Views
Dr. Klaus M. Blache
Univ. of Tennessee Reliability
and Maintainability Center
(RMC)

How do you see IIoT and digital applications being used with R&M?
	 These implementations can be used
in fields everywhere and allow thousands
of data points to be tracked and recorded.
Trending can then show whether systems are
performing well or components may need to
be changed.
	 Can be used in R&M to make better
data-driven decisions-what is happening in
the moment (real time).
	 The technology advancements being
made are providing easier and more accurate
ways to capture and analyze data in R&M.
	 With accurate data, statistical-analysis
software can be used to identify failure
modes and design weaknesses.
Q Older existing employees have practical knowledge and younger employees
EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM |

31

5/1/20 10:35 AM
http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Efficient Plant May 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant May 2020
