The reliability and predictive maintenance industries are currently struggling to attract college students to the field. The latest white paper released by Experience discusses the recruitment of Generation Y. The 2009 Career Influence Survey shows that of the 46% of people who decided their major in high school, only 19% went on to change majors. On the contrary, of the 54% of students who decided their major in college, 68% of them changed their major. Employers that higher in the science, technology, engineering and math careers should be aware that 61% of people entering those fields, decided their major in high school or earlier. And 89% of them stayed in their chosen major.

This only goes to show that the lack of interest in reliability engineering and predictive maintenance is partially due to Generation Y not being exposed to all it involves during school. 37% of the participants said it was the information they were exposed to that lead to their chosen career path. While another 41% said school, work, or other experiences (like internships) had the most impact on their career choice. Point being, employers of all careers, not only predictive maintenance and reliability engineering, need to start recruiting at a younger age. Generation Y will be the majority of the workforce soon enough, and in order to sustain interest I each field, knowledge of that career needs to be given out earlier. Reliability jobs and predictive maintenance jobs cannot be filled if the recruiting starts with seniors in college, it must start while the potential candidates are in college.

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With the manufacturing industry being a common news topic, the importance of having reliability jobs and predictive maintenance jobs has come to the foreground of discussions. In the article “Oil’s Well that Starts Well,” Glen Sharkowicz discusses the importance of maximizing productivity and keeping machinery running efficiently in today’s economy. Glen works for Mobil Industrial Lubricants, and believes that in order for companies to turn a profit, they must partake in routine maintenance/checks of their machinery. Glen also states the importance of implementing a proactive maintenance strategy, instead of a reactive maintenance strategy.

The philosophy behind Glen’s statements is completely valid. Spending money on a proactive maintenance strategy shouldn’t be viewed as a cost, but rather as a strategic investment. It is better to spend a little money up front, so that more money won’t be lost down the line if something goes wrong. Bringing in reliability and predictive maintenance experts may seem like an immediate and not necessary cost, but in the long-run it may save you a lot of money; especially for large companies that have a great deal of machinery to maintain. Reliability engineers and routine predictive maintenance will help prevent unforeseen machine troubles. Predictive maintenance can help extend the life of current machinery and identify early warning signs of trouble.

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Madeleine Begun Kane is a humor columnist who writes about a variety of topics. Her “Working Stiffed” piece takes a comical approach to getting back into “battling cranky alarm clocks, rush-hour traffic, and the living for the weekend daily grind.” Madeleine’s 21-step plan to get back on track after losing a job is a light hearted view on a not so pleasant experience. Her steps start from the very beginning: from losing your job, to being bitter about losing your job, then onto redoing your resume and standing in the unemployment line, and the final step is when you finally find another job. But there is a much easier way to get your resume out there besides grueling over the help-wanted ads like she suggests. If you are looking for a reliability engineering job or a predictive maintenance job, you can post your resume on NextUp Careers where many employers will have the ability to review your resume!

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As many of you may know, reliability engineering and PdM are a huge part of the manufacturing industry. Unfortunately the economy has hit manufacturing industry hard recently and jobs have started to decline. A new bill proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown (Ohio) is aimed at helping the manufacturing industry bounce back. The Industry Week article discusses the bill and the plans for implementation. Senator Brown believes that, “We can revive American manufacturing through investments in clean energy. This bill will help our manufacturers retool, put our auto suppliers back to work and produce clean energy technologies.” The bill would act as a revolving loan for auto suppliers and small to mid sized manufacturers. The Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009 would establish the $30 billion manufacturing revolving loan fund. With this fund, states would receive funds for the establishment of the revolving loan programs to assist in updating, expanding or establishing clean energy manufacturing operations and improving energy efficiency. More details of the proposed bill can be read at Industry Week.

If this bill is past, it may help revive the manufacturing industry. Considering that last month, nearly half of the nation’s job losses were tied to manufacturing, the industry could really use a boost. Let us hope that the manufacturing industry can get back on track and need to hire additional employees. And with more manufacturing taking place, more PdM jobs and reliability engineering jobs will be needed to help sustain the transition/expansion into clean energy or energy efficiency.

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On April 7th, a one day seminar on “Understanding Reliability Engineering”was held in the UK. Over 70 people from various sectors of the UK attended the seminar. The key note speaker, Pantelis Vassiliou, flew in from the United States to make the presentation. Vassiliou is the Chief Executive Officer of the ReliaSoftCorporation and is known for being an expert on reliability engineering. He trains, consults, and lectures on reliability engineering topics to Fortune 1000 companies worldwide. At the seminar participants were provided with an overview of the positive business benefits that can be gained by incorporating reliability engineering methods and tools into organizations, as well as the consequences of not using them (including loss in financial terms, credibility and reputation). The importance of engineering is echoed by the department manager of Raytheon’s Reliability Analysis Lab, Bill Tice. Tice states that, “planning for product reliability is just as important as planning for a product’s design and manufacturer. The amount of product reliability must be in proportion to a product’s usage and warranty goals. Too much reliability and the product will be too expensive. Too little reliability and the warranty and repair costs will be high.”

The article shows how important it is for organizations to keep reliability engineering as common business practice. When companies are trying to stay afloat in the recession, they try to cut back on the things they feel are not as important, and unfortunately reliability engineering and predictive maintenance seem to be on the chopping block. It is articles like these posted by Raytheon and Wilde FEA Ltd that touch upon how important it is to have reliability engineering in an organization.

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Let’s face it – over the past few years, whether you’re a reliability engineer or a stocker at the local grocery store, we’ve all been asked to do more with less.

But with layoffs happening all around us, those who have survived a layoff are being asked to do even more. According to a recent CareerBuilder survey of 4,435 workers across the country, 47% of workers said additional duties had been given to them because of a layoff, and 37% said their workload had doubled as they tried to handle tasks previously done by two people.

Dave Clemens’ HR blog provides some valuable tips for both managers and employees on how to cope with additional demands due to layoffs:

• Establish priorities and set reasonable timeframes – work together to determine what needs to get done first and set reasonable timelines. Don’t let your to-do list spiral out of control.
• Take a break – take a full lunch, take a walk, or take a day off when you’re burned out. We all need time to refocus and re-energize.
• Turn off – between cell phones, email, and BlackBerries, we’re in constant contact and can’t find the time to relax – even at home.

These are tough times, and while we need to remain flexible and continue to work hard, we also need to take the time to prioritize, refocus, and decompress.

If you haven’t been so lucky as to survive a layoff and are looking for a career in the reliability or predictive maintenance industry, be sure to post your resume to NextUp Careers.com!

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We recognize that Reliability & PdM is a very specialized industry.  With that said both professionals and hiring companies are finding it harder and harder to make a match.  Go to monster.com and put in “reliability engineer”. We found that only 8 of the 25 jobs on the first page had ANYTHING to do with Reliability Engineering  jobs.  This is why we created Nextup Careers.  Our goal is to have the most relevant and fresh jobs anywhere.  We are adding more jobs and functionality every week so check back often. Companies can also post jobs for free until July 1st.

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The most recent jobs report was out last Friday and this article – “US Jobs Losses in May Slow, Fueling Recovery Hopes” gives all the basic details.  Apparently, the US economy only lost 345,000 jobs in May, which is better than expected.  Unfortunately, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4%, the highest since 1083, but even then it appears this is good news as it means that people who had given up hope of finding a job have changed their minds; now they are looking for jobs.  I don’t know if we should take this as confidence (as the article suggests) or more of a recognition that people have got to eat and pay the rent.

Unfortunately, the article does not discuss what has happened to manufacturing related jobs in May, although if the news about Chrysler and General Motors are an indication of manufacturing health, I’m assuming it was a pretty grim month for the manufacturing sector.  We’ve been continuing to hear about layoffs of reliability engineers and predictive maintenance professionals, but don’t have enough quantifiable data to share with you.  If you know about plant closings or layoffs where reliability engineers and predictive maintenance professionals have lost jobs, please let us know about them.

Lastly, beta testing is going well, but we can always use more help as the more insight we get, the better we will be able to service you in your future pursuit of job and career opportunities.  If you are interested in helping with our testing, please let us know – we would appreciate the help.

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