Job descriptions and profiles

A cross-company function, often still considered unproductive, "maintenance" had to wait until the end of the 20th century to be recognized as a profession in its own right. And, of course, with a profession comes the associated skills and the day-to-day application of knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills.

Traditionally, it was thought that a good maintenance technician should first and foremost be a skilled "handyman", capable of troubleshooting the most complex machines by "snapping his fingers". We know that this is not the case, and that if we want the "maintenance" function to really play its role in the production system, i.e. to produce the required equipment availability, we need to master not only technological skills, but also methodological and management skills.

Traditionally, maintenance staff included a certain number of people who were there because we didn't really know what they were supposed to do, or because we wanted to keep them away from the rest of the staff (delegates and representatives of various bodies, etc.). Clearly, this is no longer the case today, and the new industrial situation, the need for companies to be competitive, and the knowledge - now quantified - of the cost of maintenance as an integral part of industrial production costs, have led to in-depth reflection on the maintenance profession, its missions, the activities it must carry out, and the skills it must master.

Without aiming to be exhaustive, this article lays down the general principles of a methodology leading to the establishment of "job profiles", providing a complete mapping of the activities and skills required to accomplish a perfectly defined main mission. This methodology will of course be applied to maintenance jobs, and in particular to those of maintenance managers, supervisors and operational technicians.