Equipment Reliability Manager
POSITION SUMMARY:
The Equipment Reliability Manager (ERM) is accountable for ensuring Intertech's manufacturing equipment and critical supporting plant systems are reliable, available, maintainable, and capable of supporting production requirements.
Much of Intertech's manufacturing equipment has operated intensively - often on a 24/5 basis - for many years within an organization historically oriented toward responding quickly to failures rather than systematically preventing them. Intertech intends to preserve the urgency and practical equipment knowledge that exist today while building a stronger reliability organization.
The ERM leads that transformation by improving asset health, maintenance systems, technical capability, team performance, and the predictability of manufacturing operations.
The role requires enough technical credibility to understand difficult equipment problems, challenge assumptions, and participate meaningfully in troubleshooting, but success does not depend on possessing every technical specialty. Leadership, judgment, curiosity, problem solving, team development, and the ability to effectively leverage technicians, Engineering, Production, OEMs, contractors, and other resources are more important.
The objective is not simply to repair equipment quickly. It is to create an organization and equipment base that fails less often.
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:
1. Equipment Reliability & Availability
Own the reliability, availability, maintainability, and lifecycle health of manufacturing equipment and critical supporting plant systems.
Ensure equipment-related production capacity is reliably available to support the authorized production
Establish maintenance capability and response appropriate to Intertech's 24/5 operation so equipment failures receive timely and appropriate technical response regardless of shift.
Identify, quantify, communicate, and manage emerging equipment risks before they unnecessarily disrupt
Balance the urgency of restoring production with the longer-term need to protect asset health and prevent
2. Asset Restoration, Modernization & Lifecycle Management
Assess equipment condition, reliability, maintainability, obsolescence, remaining life, parts availability, and business risk.
Establish equipment criticality considering safety, quality, production capacity, customer impact, redundancy, failure consequence, repair lead time, and financial exposure.
Develop and maintain an integrated lifecycle roadmap that identifies appropriate repair, overhaul, refurbishment, controls modernization, reliability improvement, and replacement strategies.
Develop technically and economically sound recommendations rather than defaulting to either continued repair or replacement.
For approved projects, own technical scope, alternatives evaluation, vendor and contractor coordination, parts and equipment readiness, downtime requirements, schedule, budget execution, commissioning, documentation, and verification of results.
3. Maintenance Strategy, Planning & Execution
Establish maintenance strategies appropriate to asset criticality, condition, operating experience, OEM guidance, failure history, and economics.
Strengthen preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance where they create business
Build disciplined maintenance planning and scheduling so work is prioritized, scoped, prepared, resourced, coordinated, and executed effectively.
Move the organization toward an increasingly planned and predictable maintenance environment while preserving appropriate emergency response capability.
Define planned-maintenance requirements and timing early enough for Customer Fulfillment and Production to coordinate production, inventory, materials, and customer needs.
Focus on reliability outcomes rather than adherence to any particular branded maintenance or continuous-improvement methodology.
4. Recurring Failure Elimination & Problem Solving
Ensure recurring equipment problems are investigated rather than normalized through repeated
After a second occurrence, begin intentional evaluation of underlying cause and engage appropriate internal or external resources.
Allow additional repairs when necessary to maintain production while sufficient information is gathered and alternatives are competently evaluated.
When a technically and economically superior solution is identified and vetted, drive implementation and verify the result.
Engage Engineering when specialized design, controls, process analysis, drawings, calculations, or validation are required while retaining accountability for driving the reliability problem to resolution.
The second failure starts the investigation.
5. Equipment Reliability Team Leadership
Assess and develop the Equipment Reliability organization structure, staffing model, roles, skill mix, shift coverage, leadership depth, and work processes.
Evaluate capability in mechanical, electrical, controls/PLC, hydraulics/pneumatics, fabrication, preventive maintenance, equipment-specific knowledge, and structured troubleshooting.
Develop technicians through coaching, training, cross-training, increased responsibility, and problem
Reduce single-person and single-shift dependencies and ensure sufficient technical capability exists across all operating shifts.
Determine which capabilities should be maintained internally and which are better supplied through OEMs, contractors, controls specialists, machine shops, predictive-maintenance resources, or other external
Recommend and implement appropriate organizational, staffing, assignment, and shift changes through normal approval processes.
Prefer development of existing people wherever reasonably possible while making necessary changes when required capability or performance is not achieved.
Build an organization that becomes less dependent on the ERM personally as its people and systems
6. Maintenance Information & CMMS
Create trustworthy maintenance-management information that supports effective
Evaluate the current maintenance system and lead implementation of an appropriate modern
Establish useful asset hierarchy and history, work-order discipline, preventive-maintenance records, failure coding, downtime information, labor and parts history, backlog visibility, maintenance cost information, spare-parts data, and reliability analytics.
Ensure success is measured by adoption, data discipline, and usefulness of information - not simply software
7. Maintenance Purchasing, Critical Spares & External Resources
Own identification, specification, sourcing, purchasing, and appropriate availability of maintenance and repair parts, critical spares, outside maintenance services, OEM support, contractors, and other reliability resources within normal financial controls.
Develop a risk-based critical-spares strategy considering equipment criticality, failure probability, supplier lead time, substitutes, repairability, redundancy, cost, and business consequence.
Develop and manage effective relationships with technical vendors, OEMs, contractors, and specialists and hold them accountable for performance.
8. Facilities, Infrastructure & Customer-Owned Tooling
Own maintenance and reliability of critical supporting plant infrastructure, including electrical distribution, compressed air, HVAC, cooling/chillers, plumbing, docks and doors, building systems, grounds, and similar
Own routine preventive maintenance, inspection, repair, records, and identification of emerging concerns for customer-owned production tooling.
Recognize that substantive tooling modifications, redesigns, or upgrades require customer authorization and acceptance and are generally performed at customer expense.
Identify deterioration and improvement needs early enough to avoid unnecessary production
FINANCIAL & CAPITAL RESPONSIBILITY
Develop and manage the Equipment Reliability operating budget, including labor and overtime, repair parts, critical spares, contractors, preventive and predictive maintenance, supplies, OEM support, rentals, and specialized services.
Evaluate business tradeoffs among repair, maintenance, outside services, spares, refurbishment, modernization, and replacement.
Execute approved reliability and capital plans responsibly and communicate material changes in scope, cost, timing, or business case.
Success is measured by the effectiveness of maintenance investment and its contribution to Intertech's overall performance - not by minimizing maintenance expense in isolation.
KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS & ACCOUNTABILITY BOUNDARIES:
The ERM is expected to operate as an Intertech leader first and a functional leader second.
Production - Equipment Reliability owns asset health and equipment availability. Production owns manufacturing execution, productive utilization, and proper equipment Operators and supervisors remain active partners in inspection, early identification, troubleshooting, diagnosis, and appropriate routine equipment care.
Customer Fulfillment - The ERM defines maintenance requirements, technical scope, risk, and acceptable timing Customer Fulfillment coordinates those requirements within the authorized production plan and customer commitments in partnership with Production and Equipment Reliability.
Engineering / Quality - The ERM owns asset health and drives reliability problems to Engineering owns process capability and engineered improvement. Material changes affecting throughput, process capability, quality, safety, reliability, or maintainability are developed collaboratively.
Safety - The ERM owns safe maintenance execution and equipment condition within Intertech's safety system and has independent authority to stop equipment for immediate safety risk or significant risk of catastrophic equipment damage.
Leadership Team - The ERM contributes beyond Equipment Reliability and is expected to help optimize Intertech as a whole.
LEADERSHIP & EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS:
Demonstrated accomplishment, leadership, technical judgment, and the ability to build organizational capability matter more than academic pedigree. The strongest candidate will likely have materially improved an underdeveloped, highly reactive, or otherwise challenged maintenance organization rather than simply operated within a mature system built by others.
Manufacturing maintenance, reliability, or technical leadership
Demonstrated success developing technicians and building technical
Strong structured troubleshooting and root-cause problem-solving
Experience with equipment overhaul, refurbishment, modernization, and capital
Maintenance planning and scheduling
Practical understanding of preventive, predictive, and condition-based
CMMS implementation or significant CMMS improvement
Maintenance purchasing, critical-spares, and external-resource management
Working technical breadth across mechanical, electrical, controls, and manufacturing
Ability to effectively use OEMs, contractors, Engineering, and other
Sound financial and business
Strong cross-functional collaboration and the ability to lead change while bringing people
The preferred leadership style combines engagement, coaching, collaboration, curiosity, and development of others with the backbone to establish expectations, make difficult decisions, address performance issues, and hold people accountable.
An engineering or technical degree is beneficial but not required. Relevant maintenance or reliability certifications are beneficial but not required.
CURRENT TRANSFORMATION MANDATE:
The following are important current priorities for the role. They describe Intertech's present transformation needs and should not be interpreted as a permanent limitation on the ERM's accountability:
Assess current equipment condition and reliability
Establish equipment criticality and business consequence of
Develop an integrated restoration, refurbishment, modernization, and lifecycle
Develop a technically and economically justified plan for approximately $2 million of equipment investment currently contemplated over the next 18 months, while identifying additional investment where justified.
Execute approved restoration and modernization
Establish effective maintenance capability across Intertech's 24/5
Implement a modern CMMS and create trustworthy maintenance
Strengthen preventive, predictive, condition-based, planning, and scheduling
Assess and develop team skills, cross-training, leadership depth, organization structure, staffing, and shift
Strengthen maintenance purchasing and establish a risk-based critical-spares
Systematically address recurring failures and emerging reliability
Build strong cross-functional relationships and contribute actively as a Leadership Team
Intertech recognizes that building a stronger reliability system may initially require increased maintenance activity, planned downtime, and investment. The objective is not artificially low maintenance spending or immediate achievement of mature-system benchmarks. The objective is to improve equipment health, people, systems, discipline, and culture in a way that produces sustainable business performance.
MEASURE OF SUCCESS:
Quantitative KPIs should be finalized after credible baselines are established. The ERM should ultimately be evaluated across a small number of meaningful outcome areas:
Asset Reliability & Availability - Critical equipment becomes more reliable and predictably available to support the authorized production plan.
Reliability-Risk Reduction - Significant asset risks, recurring failures, obsolescence exposures, and critical-spares vulnerabilities are systematically reduced.
Maintenance-System Effectiveness - Maintenance becomes increasingly planned, disciplined, data-informed, and capable of preventing or shortening disruptions.
Organizational Capability - Technical capability, cross-training, leadership depth, and effective response exist across all operating shifts with reduced dependence on particular individuals.
Enterprise Effectiveness - Equipment Reliability is viewed as a strong cross-functional partner and the ERM contributes meaningfully to the performance of Intertech as a whole.
