Maintenance & Reliability Manager - Automotive Job Description

The Role of Maintenance Managers in a Multi-Agent Organization

Someone has to be in charge of all the activities when there is a team of people. The scope of the maintenance manager's responsibilities is larger than with a standard managerial role. A strong maintenance management team that doesn't have to compromise can bring a lot of competitive advantages to the firm by ensuring high asset uptime and utilization, keeping a good brand image, and preventing and eliminating technical difficulties that can have a serious negative impact on the productivity of their employees.

Maintenance managers have to juggle operational activities and strategic responsibilities. They have to make sure that day-to-day operations run smoothly and that they take actions that are in line with the company's goals. Being a maintenance manager is often a balancing act, where one side you want to make sure that maintenance technicians have all the tools they need to do their job, and on the other side you want to make sure that your budget is not being wasted.

Is Maintenance and Reliability the Same?

Isn't maintenance and reliability the same thing? Yes and no. It is helpful to think of the latter as an evolution of the former.

Maintenance has traditionally been a one to one relationship with equipment. Everything machinery interacts with is encompassed by the reliability culture. Maintenance has traditionally been a one to one relationship with equipment.

Everything machinery interacts with is encompassed by the reliability culture. Since the manufacturing industry began to embrace digitization, it has been a shift. The Internet of Things is one of the ways that Industry 4.0 has made it possible for machines to communicate with each other and with data.

The idea of reliability has become more common with the change in place. Once operators are doing the activities necessary to lay the groundwork for TPM, management can begin to instil a true TPM framework by setting up activities that support the eight pillars of TPM. Implementing a CMMS, formalizing a TPM mission and vision, and performing reliability audits are some of the larger projects that will help keep reliability at the forefront of everyone's mind.

Reliability-Based Maintenance for a Car

Experts have come to understand that design, operation, technology, and organizational culture all have a significant impact on reliability. The concept is more than just maintenance, which is why the distance between reliability and traditional maintenance practices has grown over the years. Reliability-centered maintenance is not an alternative to any one maintenance strategy.

If carried out properly, a reliability-based approach will take many methods into account. Let's take a car. If you were to use a reliability-based approach to caring for it, you would use a time-based preventive maintenance schedule for an oil change, a condition-based approach for your tires, and a run-to-fail approach for light bulbs.