Abstract

Employing the Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) Body of Knowledge in a global economy is one way to improve the effectiveness of a company. Reliability and quality practitioners should be interested in finding out why theCRE exam has had such a high status and high positive economic value for those that have held this certification over recent years. ASQ surveys over the last decade consistently show that those reliability engineers who have a CRE make $5000 or more than those that don’t. What makes holding this certification so valuable across a variety of industries as diverse as nuclear power, instruments and biomedical applications? Why does corporate management appear to value this certification more than any others? The reliability engineer is in a position to affect large positive changes in many companies. Success may be described as the “intersection ofopportunity and good preparation.” To be effective the reliability engineer should be an active, hands-on change agent rather than a desk-bound, paper-driven data analyst. The exam presents the best opportunity for reliability engineers as future change agents to learn many of the active tools, planning steps and corporate operations they will need to create effective changes within key business processes. This discussion shows how knowledge of theCRE, combined with active approaches for improvement, can help reliability and quality engineers become more valuablewithin their corporations. Wants and needs can be mapped against capability to form a plan for improvement. Learn to use the tools of quality on your own career.