The future of reliability engineering as a profession

Abstract

Quality and productivity improvement, leadership and effective management are key for global growth for any enterprise. In the last Century, there has been a tremendous evolution of the ideas to improve quality in any organization. Many programs, methods and strategies were developed and continuously changed with conflicting objectives. There have been many new initiatives based on new "buzz" words to market and implement them. This has resulted in cynicism in many organizations about these methods, including recent initiatives such as TQM, Six Sigma, ISO standards, etc. In addition, with rightsizing and streamlining, many organizations may be downsizing and integrating reliability activities with other activities. Based on these trends and reality, some reliability professionals may be concerned about their future. The future for reliability engineering as a profession in very bright and will offer tremendous opportunities to reliability engineers with the "right" education, skills, attitudes and implementation capabilities based on the following ten principles.