Maintenance and Reliability Certification Exam Guide

By Nathan C. Wright

In the fields of maintenance & reliability, there are a number of certifications that “M&R” professionals may take to help further their careers, whether it be in the form of a promotion, a change of job, more money, or simply a title to add to their credentials. The exams for these tests assess the candidates’ skills and knowledge in areas such as work management, equipment reliability, leadership and organization, knowledge of the different certifications’ bodies of knowledge, manufacturing process reliability, and business management, as well as their ability to adhere to industry standards (both ANSI and ISO).    

Until now, there hasn’t been a single volume for maintenance and reliability certification candidates to use as a study guide for these exams. The Maintenance and Reliability Certification Exam Guide fills the great need for such a resource by including:   

• specifics about the different tests.
• how to study for each.
• information on where to focus review efforts.
• hundreds of sample exam questions.
• vital facts about re-certification.
• practical tips for maintenance and reliability professionals to take back with them to use on the job.

Chapters include a list of performance objectives, review questions, as well as lists of supportive reading.  Related graphs, tables, charts, and illustrations round out this indispensable work for all maintenance and reliability professionals seeking certification. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Industrial Press, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780831194659

Nathan C. Wright

Dr. Nathan C. Wright, D.M., MBA, CMRP, PMP, MLT1, is a no-nonsense Senior Manager with more than 35 years of successfully transforming companies or divisions in the heavy equipment, manufacturing, mining, food and beverage, and defense industries.  Wright offers a history of outstanding success in quickly bringing organizations to greater productivity, revenues, and win-win customer relations.  He holds a Doctorate of Management, numerous certifications, and is known and respected for leadership in three primary areas: 1. General Management; 2. Operations Management; 3. Maintenance/Reliability Engineering Management.

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Maintenance & Reliability Organizations

Performance Objectives

After studying this chapter, you will:

■ Understand the difference between holding a certification and being certified.

■ Learn the differences between the certifications available.

■ Be familiar with the basics of the certifications available to maintenance and reliability professionals.

■ Know what makes up the certifications available.

■ Understand why you should pursue one of the certifications available.

■ Be able to describe the makeup of the organizations offering certifications.

■ Define what it means to be a practitioner.

Maintenance & Reliability Organizations

There are many organizations of maintenance and reliability professionals founded by experts from many different companies. Their goal was to come together and promote the maintenance and reliability profession. These groups have been established as non-profit and have led the way for maintenance and reliability professionals to come together to advance their industry. Maintenance and reliability organizations are networking organizations with thousands of members worldwide. Through these organizations you can earn continuing education credits and increase your knowledge within the maintenance and reliability profession, plus you can develop new skills.

Earning a Maintenance & Reliability Certification

There are a litany of conferences held across the country and around the world that offer the industry opportunities to gather together and share ideas, as well as learn from each other and see some of the latest technology and tools of the trade. At many of these conferences, members are offered the opportunity to challenge their knowledge and experience by taking the organization’s certification exam. These certifications are meant to denote those practitioners who stand apart from all others in the maintenance and reliability field. These exams test the knowledge of the professionals and provide a benchmark for the rest of the industry. Today the SMRP CMRP is the only maintenance and reliability certification that is ANSI certified to meet the ISO standards for certification testing. The first CMRP exam was given at the SMRP annual conference in Cleveland, Ohio in 2000. The offering of certifications in maintenance and reliability is extremely new in the timeline of this profession. It has arisen because of the loss of senior leaders qualified for the positions they hold, as well as hands-on in the field, experienced, true maintenance and reliability professionals.

Bodies of Knowledge

Many of these organizations have undertaken the development of their own bodies of knowledge (BoK). Their members volunteered their time to build and maintain tools and libraries. These libraries have hundreds of technical papers, presentations, and other documents that are written by their membership. The maintenance and reliability organizations have vision and missions across the entire range of the industry. This signifies the involvement of their members in the entire asset life cycle from cradle to grave.

Practitioners

Most of these organizations pride themselves as being organizations created by practitioners. While there is little truth to this statement for most of these, I would question any certifying organization that touts its certification but does not require any documented work experience aspect. The word practitioner is defined as a person actively engaged in an art, discipline, or profession. Imagine if you found out that the Board-Certified cardiologist who had just done or was about to do open heart surgery on you had no actual or very limited work experience. They had read a lot of books, gone to college, attended seminars and conferences and been given the title from their hospital, but they have no practical experience. To illustrate what Board-Certified means for a practitioner in cardiology, it is a minimum of ten years of on-the-job experience doing the work and having it documented by someone who is Board-Certified. There are two tests: one is ten hours in length and the other is fourteen hours in length.

Another example would be the obstetrician that delivers your baby. There are 130 million babies born worldwide each year. This procedure has many risks associated with it. Would you want someone without years of practical experience delivering your baby? Many of you may have seen a child being born. This is a slippery mess and surprisingly few babies are dropped. Think about trying to hold on to a wet, slippery, wiggling mass with latex gloved hands. You can be assured that don’t drop the baby is part of the years of experience required to earn a board certification. If you do not believe that there is a parallel between these examples and the maintenance and reliability profession, you are not a true maintenance and reliability professional. Professionals in maintenance and reliability understand that the execution of their jobs is equally as important. The loss of professionalism in the industry is part of its erosion. When you understand that any task worth doing is worth doing right, then you are on the path to being a professional.

Your child’s Board-Certified pediatrician requires even more documented on-the-job training, and you better hope they have work experience with specific and documented instruction before they treat your child. This is what makes a practitioner. To be a maintenance and reliability practitioner, there must be documented and verifiable work experience under the guidance of another true maintenance and reliability professional. You keep thinking that these are bad comparisons, because medical practitioners have lives in their hands and maintenance and reliability professionals do not. What about those maintenance and reliability professionals working on our aircraft at American, Delta, and United or those keeping our military systems working? There are those repairing elevators, your car, amusement park rides, etc. All have lives in their hands. I know we do not always understand that you can draw a line to health and safety in many professions. Maintenance and reliability professionals work on all types of equipment. The next time you get into your car, ride in an elevator, ride on a train or bus, etc., do you want the last person who repaired it to have years of experience or graduated college, read a book or slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night? If the certification you are pursuing lacks hands-on experience, I would seriously question how much it really means. I would challenge all maintenance and reliability organizations espousing that they are practitioners, and that their certification denotes a recipient as one, to ask themselves the following question: what is their work experience requirement and is it enough? The answer is no is because if they required a documented work experience, 80% of the certification holders would no longer qualify.

Most of these organization give the excuse that documenting work experience would be impossible. This is far from true. I am a licensed not certified Project Management Professional (PMP) which carries a greater significance over a certification. To obtain a license you must meet many stringent requirements. The most important is to have documented 7,500 hours of leading and directing projects. This is not generic work experience with no definition: They mandate you have 13% of the time in project initiation covering the 8 tasks in that domain; 24% of this time is in planning projects covering the 13 tasks in that domain;then you must possess 31% of the hours in project exec ution covering the 7 tasks in that domain; you must also have 25% of the time in monitoring and controlling projects encompassing the 7 tasks in this domain; and finally, you need to have 7% of the hours in closing a project covering the 7 tasks that make up this domain.

The work experience you submit requires details and a contact who is qualified to verify the hours. So, when maintenance and reliability organizations communicate that documenting work experience is impossible, that is victim thinking and a lie. The reality is those in positions of authority in these organization lack the work experience and do not want it to be a robust part of the certification.

If you press the leadership of your maintenance and reliability organization, you will find that most lack real world experience and have no on-the-job training under a qualified maintenance and reliability professional themselves. Do your research and remember that no certification replaces experience in the field with your hands, doing the work; not watching it being done or directing a maintenance professional to go out and do it. If you lack hands-on experience making repairs, improvements, etc., you cannot call yourself a true maintenance and reliability professional or practitioner.

Body of Knowledge Volume Size

Most of the maintenance and reliability organizations have information worth sharing in their bodies of knowledge. Surprisingly, these volumes are relatively small. They are anywhere from twenty to a few hundred pages in length. They provide resources, networking events, and opportunities for continuing education. Their stated focus is on the growth of the maintenance and reliability profession and this is accomplished through the networking you take advantage of. They possess multiyear strategic plans that are aligned with their vision, mission, and values. Their stated missions are to develop and promote maintenance and reliability efforts. They accomplish this through a vision of global leadership and ingrained values of collaboration, continuous improvement, trust, respect, and social responsibility.

Committees

Committees are used in place of larger general meetings. They require a lot less time and can provide a more in-depth conversation than can usually be accomplished in a general session. The outcome from a committee meeting can then be presented to the general group for final discussion. Working in committees is more efficient and the committee can have a focus on a specific skill or skills of the members to take full advantage of them. The general membership, when divided into committees, gets more involved and can share responsibilities according to the skills they possess. They are also opportunities for new and experienced members to collaborate and help inexperienced members develop confidence.

Since these organizations are all-volunteer, members are asked to participate in various committee efforts. The committees are formed for specific tasks and most are for a short duration. Each organization uses these smaller groups in a variety of manners, but this does not mean their importance is small. They are the backbone of the organizations.

Chapters

Many organizations offer many different avenues for development. There are many local chapters across the organizations. They provide members an opportunity to connect face-to-face with their peers on a more frequent basis. This gives members an opportunity to network, share ideas and host events to grow their membership and spread the maintenance and reliability profession beyond their organization. Having these face-to-face meetings on a more regular basis helps further the organization’s agenda and strengthen its resolve. An additional advantage of local chapter activities are regional specific focus that can enhance the overall group. They can affect the local municipalities like the larger organizations influence our federal leaders.

Common Interest Groups

Members can join several common interest groups that host industry specific discussions and educational opportunities. These events are held online and over teleconference to allow members worldwide to attend. It is the responsibility of specific industry maintenance and reliability professionals to take ownership of their problems and work to solve them. Many of the sessions are recorded so members can review the events when their time allows. The goal of these groups is to connect practitioners from the same industries to focus on industry specific topics. I have worked in many different industries and a truth common to all of them has been that while there is a lot of commonality, there are industry specific problems that require your help.

Publications

Publications that feature member articles and current news are distributed periodically. They include information from the other development areas and are focused on the organizations’ bodies of knowledge. These publications can share maintenance and reliability advancements with a wider base, promoting the value of our efforts to all organizations. The members who contribute to these publications are afforded an opportunity to reach a much larger group of people than they would be able to under normal circumstances.

Webinars

Several organizations offer webinars that are educational opportunities relevant to today’s industry. It is an opportunity to learn from the best of the best. The presentations are peer reviewed to ensure accuracy and that they are in alignment with the organization’s mission. Once you have earned their certification you will need to complete continuing education credit hours every few years to keep your certification. Each webinar is credited hours toward your recertification. However, the focus of these webinars is not the recertification of the credentials but the education of all who want to attend.

Government Activism

This is where these organizations voice the needs of the maintenance and reliability profession to Capitol Hill. They help influence industry regulations at the federal level. This is done through contact with key policy makers to represent the public’s voice. Almost every industry is represented in the organization’s membership and this membership represents the subject matter experts in their fields. Members testify in congressional hearings and assist in drafting advance legislation. Some of the recent focuses are cybersecurity, workplace safety, smart grid, and workforce