To be able to fulfill all of the responsibilities mentioned above, maintenance technicians need to possess a wide variety of skills and traits. Let’s briefly touch upon the most common ones.
what skills do you need to be a maintenance technician
#1) Problem-solving skills
To reach predefined production numbers, maintenance technicians are often required to finish their assignments as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about unplanned breakdowns or scheduled downtimes.
While maintenance checklists can help to streamline some maintenance processes and repairs, there will be plenty of situations that don’t match any template. A technician will have to be able to inspect the breakdown, check maintenance history, talk with machine operators, and take all of this information into account to correctly diagnose the cause of failure and perform needed corrective actions.
#2) Broad technical knowledge
Maintenance technicians are often expected to be the jack-of-all-trades as their tasks require them to know a little bit of everything. One day they need to replace faulty electrical switches and another day they get a task that requires basic welding skills.
On top of that, and this is something thatpreventive maintenance technicians are familiar with, any technician that wants to become a strong addition to their maintenance team needs to put in extra effort to learn insides and outs of all of the machines on the plant floor.
A maintenance tech that has a broad technical knowledge will pick things up faster and won’t have to be watched over that much in their early days.
#3) Attention to detail
When you’re dealing with technical issues on a daily basis, having a methodical approach and the ability to focus on minor details is extremely beneficial. Wires connected in reversed position, a small piece of production material dislodged in the wrong place, a part connected in a wrong orientation, a few screws that were not tightened properly – those are all small issues that can lead to big problems.
A technician with great attention to detail does not only benefit the company’s bottom line but also creates a safer working environment for themselves and all of their coworkers.
#4) Physical ability
A maintenance technician can’t be someone who is hesitant to get their hands dirty. This job position requires someone that is able to work in awkward positions (being bent over for example), that can carry heavy things from time to time, spend the whole shift standing, repeatedly climb and walk down the stairs, and so on.
Being able to stay concentrated during night shifts and overtime work is also not easy when someone is in poor physical shape.
It goes without saying that being good with your hands and having steady hands is a big plus (they won’t be defusing bombs, but will definitely feel like that a few times throughout their career).
#5) Basic computer skills
More and more organizations are moving from reactive to maintenance scheduling and are using modern CMMS solutions like Limble to make that transition as smooth as possible.
What this means is that maintenance technicians need to know how to use a mobile phone to read work orders, track work notifications, log performed maintenance work, etc. That being said, the responsibility of the CMMS provider is to ensure that their software is easy to use in the first place.
#6) Patience
Patience and people skills are not something you will often find on the list for technical job positions, but that doesn’t make them any less important.
Finding the root cause of a certain breakdown is not always going to be easy. Dealing with constant interruptions in a reactive environment can be very annoying. Improvised solutions that are the result of not having the proper tools or parts often won’t work on the first try.
It is much easier to deal with these kinds of problems if patience is one’s strong suit.
Additionally, patience is a characteristic that will also help in dealing with machine operators and people from other departments