and representative market for the engineer professional. ... User of basic computer tools; .... using automation as the main tool to solve controlproblems.
Maintenance-Automation Engineer: Realistic Considerations for a New Curricula Albuquerque, Carlos Jesivan Marques* and Fortes, Marcio Zamboti **,USS developed directly in the company. Some of the specific knowledge and abilities must be taught during the training period when the professional will adapt his academic experience to the company policies, and also learn about specific equipment used. But, the best formation will represent the best facilitator in this adaptation process.
Abstract In the last few years the technology industry has changed quickly specially due to the development in the semiconductor area, software progress and new materials. From the operational point of view, it can be said that, one of the greatest advances was in the maintenance tests area that followed the same advanced pace of the previous referred areas, and which was permitted by its development. Managers in the industry have made effort to reduce costs and to increase productivity without changing teams. They are looking for new engineers with special knowledge, mainly related with good formation for operate and manage automated process, with joined qualification for acting in consonance with the updated philosophies maintenance. But it is not easy to find them because the university doesn't update engineering courses at the same speed as it is demanded by the industry. Like this, some Engineering Curricula are old and incomplete and cannot meet those real professional necessities in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to present a new profile suggestion for Engineering, considering these real needs due to the advances in computer, communications, process control, quality standard, and automation process, in a new industrial reality. It will describe a research about the actual status of maintenance/automation professional in the south region of Rio de Janeiro State in Brazil and analyze some results that it suppose can inspire a new formation for the engineering professional referred above.
Index Terms engineering education, management, industrial management.
During the last decade, several industries have changed their process to automation system. The goal with the technology updated has been to grow the productivity and to provide adequate product cost for a competitive market. Considering that the university is the best curricula (graduate and specialization courses), it could be assumed that the professional would be easily integrated in the professional activity. Therefore, nowadays this is not necessarily true. In order to support this continuous change, it is necessary a new professional, because the real need is a multi specialist engineer, with multidisciplinary formation - different from the current formation profile, with basic but strong knowledge (calculus, geometry, physics, chemistry, materials resistance, electricity, electrical circuits, among other subjects), specific and actual knowledge, for example in logic circuits, power electronic, corrosion, welding, computer assisted project and linear circuits software engineering, complemented by a good basis in the management/administration area, all particularly related to automation and maintenance. What could be done to integrate these different curricula? This question can be answered using research as a tool. The following text is a sample in order to conform an engineer's curricula to the actual needs in the industry, using the results and conclusions on research accomplished, as discussed in [1], for support and to guide the search of more appropriate formation profile. Like this, research for the best curricula was done based on interviews with managers that work in the south region of Rio de Janeiro's industry. This region has industrial characteristics that make it be considered reasonable and representative market for the engineer professional. Specifically, this region has metalworkers, automobile, packaging, food, brewery, paper processing, and several service companies (project, maintenance, automation process, technical support, cleaning, logistic and others).
maintenance
I. INTRODUCTION
Actually, it is established that, in general, there is no workforce in Engineering with the necessary and special knowledge in maintenance and automation process, and particularly for process management in this kind of environment. The graduate in Industrial Engineering is only
able to meet some of the necessities in the market opportunities, but he is not a prepared professional capable of fulfilling all requirements. Therefore, some important abilities and qualifications wanted in an ideal professional, in confrontation with the available current profile, represents a big concern for the Human Relations department. Most of the specific instructions for a post in the industry will be
Many universities in the country offer industrial engineering course, or mechanical, or production or electrical courses, with emphasis for industry. But, in general, these courses have changed little in their content over the several decades, causing a very frequent contrast between the industry needs and the real curricula. This paper will explore Engineering
*cjesivanguss.br, cjesivangig.com.br
** mzambotiguss.br, mzambotigig.com.br
Authors are teachers in Electrical Engineering Department, Severino Sombra University (USS), Vassouras, RJ - 27700-000, Brazil.
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region. It was also considered school activities and reports during pos-graduate course in Maintenance Techniques and Management. The main themes, whose data were analyzed, are listed below: * Maintenance Structure; * Maintenance Policies and actions; * Service contract for maintenance teams; * Process Automation; * Automation Service Contracts; and * Engineer Team Qualified. The information also considered career planning, environmental aspects, risks, salaries, language skills and administration knowledge.
issues and will suggest new curricula for a new professional: Maintenance-Automation Engineer. II. METHODOLOGY RESEARCH
There is in [2] a report about study elaborated by Sao Paulo University (USP), which showed what the managers and other analysts considered the best attributes for a new engineering professional. The following were emphasized: * Quality involvement; * Clear vision of the customers' needs; * Initiative to make decisions; * User of basic computer tools; * Planning capacity; * Market vision; * Professional vision; * Ability to save resources; and * Ability to manage people. To exercise the profession in engineering imposes natural connection between these attributes and the attributes related to the technical knowledge requested. In this sense, SACADURA in [2] it presents too other demands for the engineer wanted by the companies. Besides solids scientific and technological knowledge, the professional should possess developed the observation and conception sense of the concrete world and the capacity of to make concept and to elaborate models with easiness to be explored and easily communicable. The adopted methodology in the accomplished research and presented in this paper, considered many of these points as orientation/philosophic and conceptual basis to define a new curricula. Specifically related to the curricula program, the lack identified in the formation, through obtained research information, served it as support. It is intended that this research can be a part of a larger study about the reformulation in the traditional Engineering curricula in Brazil, inspiring curricular reformulation in others similar Brazilian regions, despite of the fact that the Rio de Janeiro south region represents a small part of the work force. It was demonstrated in the beginning of the studies that, there is a real relation between this region and other great regions in Brazil that include industrial activities. Specifically, this region demonstrates a big equivalence in the average salary, human resources support and technology which becomes an excellent point for analysis. The research looked for the basic activities in each segment relating to maintenance and automation professionals and searches to obtain the information about what kind of professional the companies would want to hire, if necessary, based on its new expectations. This study searches to represent the industry activities using information from the main companies in several different sectors. Several questionnaires were sent to the companies with representative teams in research subject or handed over to graduate and pos-graduate Severino Sombra University (USS) students that work, worked or had traineeship in the
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III. RESULTS
The data analysis leads to the identification of the main aspects listed below: * With rare exceptions, the companies in the south region of Rio de Janeiro have automated processes; * These companies work an average of (considering percentage of working hours), 50% in preventive maintenance, 25% in predictive maintenance and 25% with corrective/failure maintenance; * The contract services reach 40% of all maintenance activities; * New projects and improvement using automation in the actual process has a scene that increase with service contract engineers. This is a regional tendency; * In the majority of cases, companies do not have big engineer team and several specialists. The professionals that work in these groups have studied in the regional universities and worked for more than fifteen years in the company; * Normally, all the improvement and development activities are managed by the Engineers and are done using internal technical workforce; * There is a big concern by the management group with energy conservation, environment protection and process automation; * The operator already does some small adjustments, lubrication, inspection routes and tightening; * Predictive activities are done by contracted companies, mainly on termography, vibration analysis and oil *
* *
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analysis; Normally, the services companies employ professionals with several years of experience in industrial maintenance or young engineers with specialization course in Maintenance Engineer; The maintenance supervisors are Engineers with college degrees, but they don't have Administration /Management knowledge; Both technical and professionals engineers have restricted knowledge about process automation.
group (assemblies and disassembles). Finally, it can be said that, this professional must be able to register not conformity in an adequate form and report its. Like this, the identification and solution of the problems can be possible, based on the important information that this new professional will collect daily, check directly on the equipment or manage its. It's observed that, there are some special and including gaps in normal or even special curricula that need to be completed, like is commented in [3], [4]: * Design an algorithm to solve a described problem; * Ability to define engineering problems; * Ability to carry out a complete project; * Carrying out technical development and researches; * Identify customer requirements. It was considered, finally, engineering courses that bring together theory and practice, as commented by Raju [5]. He observed that industry executives have complained that the skills of engineers entering the workforce are not sufficient to meet the challenges of high-performance workplace.
IV. CONSIDERED POINTS Several factors have to be considered when thinking of a more complete and useful maintenance/automation engineer profile. Initially, it must be thought in the crescent necessity to reduce teams to a minimum. Like this, the professional needs to be more multi disciplinary, because nowadays his work involves operation and maintenance joined activities and, frequently, the management of its. A second factor is related to a continuous change in
electrical and electronic circuits, because of the increased technologies in topologies, conceptions, design and devices, using automation as the main tool to solve control problems. Consequently, the professional must be versatile and develop some basic analysis in automation circuits. The third factor that will define the profile of this professional is due to the increment of routes and some software implementation and controls. The professional needs to work all the time with worksheets and to insert data in maintenance control programs. For this reason, this professional must have, at least, a simple knowledge of this software, statistics of process, supervisory, electronic spread sheets and other items. The fourth factor is related to preparing this professional to work with productivity and performance index. When the team works with a quality and efficiency performance, certainly the costs will be reduced. Another important point it's refers also to the integration between Maintenance Engineering and operational tasks. It is desired that the professional observe the entire process variable and knows exactly how to prevent and quickly sort out little problems that can occur during the operations mode. When the reduction of the team is considered - due to the modernization associated to the increasing evolution in the area of the Maintenance Engineering, it's necessary, at least, basic knowledge of quality tools, with reasonable statistical knowledge. In the actual situation is not desired that the professional only observe and accomplish the basic operations in the process, but manage it and its main variable, in all aspects. So, the engineer will be able to know when, for instance, to take prevention and corrective actions, aiming and doing regularization activities, with immediate shunting line solution, to prevent several problems and failures in the final product. This professional must develop some additional capability for it. It's desired a strong dose of qualification to also take care of some activities of maintenance, inherent to the installed plant, carrying through small interventions of maintenance, being able himself to identify, act and to instruct the operator how to act, for example, in small activities as: to tight, do lubrications, measure temperatures, collect and register data in the field, visual inspection, to fill worksheets with process values, to check local panel like "panel view", and support the activities of infrastructure implementation
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V. PROFILE SUGGESTED
Based on the information and answers of the questionnaire, it is possible to make a list of some characteristics that academy (mainly) and the industry (like a support, in training jobs or longer periods of probation) can attend in new curricula for Maintenance-Automation Engineer. In the academic formation, some concepts need to be included in specific subjects as: * 1St Semester * Basic Computation: include Support Software like Office and others [3]. * Social Science: include Labor Laws - State and Federal. * 2nd Semester * Environmental Science: include Environmental Risks Analysis. * Statistics: include Maintenance Statistics and Statistics Process Control. * 3rd Semester * Technical English/Spanish/French. * Technical Design: to actualize subjects using Industrial Design Software - Computer-aided design (CAD), Smart Draw and others. * 4th Semester * Advanced Calculus: to use Mat Lab and others mathematical software's. * 5th Semester * Economical Engineering: to introduce Integrated Project Software [6]. * 7th Semester * Administration in Engineering: to reinforce some basic administration/management concepts as: Management in a new global market, Human
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Resources, Management Strategies [7],[8],[9] and special attention for Contract Administration. [10]. 9th Semester * Industrial Automation: include Industrial Network LAN, WAN, Device Net, Intranet, ModBus, Profibus, and others. * Automation Laboratory: include Simulators, like Math Lab/Simulink, Psipce, EWB and others [3]. * Energy Efficient Program: include Renewable Sources, Conservation and Quality Energy - best practices and benchmarking. * Final Course Project II: include Project Management. New disciplines need to be create to support a new suggested professional as: * 6th Semester * Quality Engineer I: 5S - Japanese concept for House Keeping - Sort (Seiri), Straighten (Seiton), Shine (Seiso), Standardize (Seiketsu) and Sustain (Shitsuke), and Quality Tools - Critical Path Method (CPM), Gantt Charts, PERT Charts, Fishbone Charts, Cause-and-Effect Diagrams, Histograms, Check Sheets, Pareto Diagrams, Graphs, Scatter Diagrams, Root Cause and others. * Maintenance Techniques: Preventive, Predictive, Proactive and Corrective. Including specific concepts about Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) - Used to increase time between failure (MTBF) and life of machinery and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). * 7th Semester * Quality Engineer II: include Total Quality, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Quality Assurance - A planned and systematic set of activities to ensure that variances in processes are clearly identified, assessed and improving defined processes for fulfilling the requirements of customers and product or service makers and 8D Process. The 8D Process is structured into 8 steps (the D's) and emphasizes team. The 8 basic steps are: define the problem and prepare for process improvement, establish a team, describe the problem, develop integer containment, define and verify root cause, choose permanent corrective action, implement corrective action, prevent recurrence, recognize and reward the contributors. * 8th Semester * Industrial Instrumentation: with special emphasis for software and new technologies. * Engineering Applied Statistics: 5 Laws of Six Sigma * Law 0: The Law of the Market * Law 1: The Law of Flexibility * Law 2: The Law of Focus * Law 3: The Law of Velocity * Law 4: The complexity of the service or product
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offering adds more non-value, costs and WIP than either poor quality (low Sigma) or slow speed (unLean) process problems. 9th Semester * Advanced Programming: include Control Logic Program Language and Maintenance Control Software - Planning and Control Maintenance. * Metrology - concepts and practices. Note: it must be predictive practices and cases studies in all items above. In the Industry: * Process Control - The features or mechanisms that control the execution of a *Process*, including process initiation, selection of process steps, selection of alternative steps, iteration of steps within a loop, and process termination. * Process Indicator - These are indicators which directly measure the performance of key processes that affect customer expectations. Specific actions can be taken to improve the performance of these indicators, which in turn should improve the performance of the measurable result. * Process flow charts and Process control Plan. * Reliability, maintenance, availability, fault tree for main equipment. * Quality Tools: Standard, operational instructions, technical instructions, quality problem report et al. * Safety Procedures. * Vision, Mission, Values, Objectives, Strategies, SWOT and Goals. * Process Management - Also called Business Process Quality Management or Reengineering. The concept of defining macro and micro processes, assigning ownership, and creating responsibilities for the owners. Modifying, altering, reshaping, redesigning any business/production process, work method or management style to deliver greater value. The art of reshaping, an organization and belonging processes to attain optimal result, through continuous improvements within the organization. * Product Quality - Also called statistical quality control. The managerial process during which actual process performance is evaluated and actions are taken on unusual performances. It is a process to ensure whether a product meets predefined standards and requisite action taken if the standards are not met * Productivity and cost products - direct and indirect * * *
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cost. Process Capability index (Cpk) Index and cost maintenance - Average time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean time to repair (MTTR), Operational costs - Sometimes referred to as Revenue or Running Costs, these are the costs resulting from day-to-day running of an operation, as: staff costs, hardware maintenance and electricity.
* *
Energy index and their cost impacts. Project Evaluation - Scope, checklists, editorial,
*
submissions, acceptable policies, annual reports et al. Metrology Procedures - percent of tolerance, precision, times to certify instruments and others.
[12] E.G.C. Collins and M.A. Devanna, The Portable MBA. Ed. John Wiley & Sons, 1990. [13] L.P. do Vale Pereira and W.A. Bazzo, Ensino da Engenharia, na busca de seu Aprimoramento. Ed. UFSC, 1997. [14] M.G.Salum and R.Gallery, "The Development of the Mining Engineering Educational at the University of Minas Gerais," in International Conference on Engineering Education, Ostrava, 1999.
VI. CONCLUSION Due to a new millennium and the fast technology advances, it is necessary to adapt the engineering curricula to a new reality in the workplace. In this paper it was resumed a study about a new profile for Maintenance and Automation Engineer, with joined abilities for process management. Some industrial opinions and other investigations through interviews and reports were considered. It's considered that is necessary to change or incorporate some new knowledge in the University, improving the adaptation between the academic formation and the market expectations. Some important examples about this improvement were described here. When is considered the nature of the area in which the research was accomplished, it can be supposed that many of the exposed ideas can be extrapolated for an including scenery, relative to other industrial areas. The Severino Sombra University is already using some of this information to adapt its graduate and pos-graduate curricula.
Carlos Jesivan Marques Albuquerque was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on April 27, 1956. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering (telecommunications emphasis) from the Military Engineering Institute, in 1988 and the M.S. degree from the same school, in 1995. His employment experience included Brazilian Army (Brazilian Army
Radio Service and Research and Development Institute), working with implementation, operation and maintenance on communications and antenna systems, dedicated environment to developing of military equipment, and implementation of a basic plant dedicated to a microelectronics process on semiconductors materials. Nowadays he is working (since 1990) in Severino Sombra University and developing activities in graduate course and research, including linear electronics, maintenance techniques and Engineering Education. Marcio Zamboti Fortes was born in Volta Redonda, Brazil, on April 26, 1969. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Vassouras Engineering School, Severino Sombra University, in 1991 and the M.S. degree form Itajuba Federal University, in 2000. His employment experience included the Companhia Siderurgica Nacional, Companhia Cervejaria Brahma, J.P. Engenharia, Surebeam Brasil and Tivit Tecnologia da Informa,co, working with electrical machines, facilities, power plants projects, drives and maintenance. Nowadays he is working (since 2000) in Severino Sombra University and developing activities in graduate course and research, including energy conservation, maintenance activities, power plant planning and Engineering Education.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Mrs. Marlene Fortes Nogueira for her assistance. REFERENCES [1] [2]
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