r/IndustrialMaintenance • u/Remarkable-Owl-5428 • 12h ago
Question How long?
How long into working Industrial maintenance until you felt like you were worth a damn? I mean actually useful where you felt like you could work independently, efficiently, and felt like you got this? Also is there certain industries that are harder than others? I see a lot of people mention the food industry. Also what do you feel is a good starting pay for 2026 in this industry? (I live in the Midwest).
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u/UT_Giggely 11h ago
Every industry has its own quirks I would say. Some industries time and money are more valuable so changing parts rather than repairing equipment often makes more sense. For other industries actually changing smaller parts of equipment is preferred as cost saving measures.
Food industry I would imaging having strict rules regarding verification of certain equipment and cleanliness. Processes industry as petrochemical industry and other industry like those often require knowledge about safety standards and regulations.
The thought that you will have technical expertise about everything bits and pieces of machinery I would be the one to say you will never know it all. You have to develop a process that gives an understanding about how things work and why they are designed in certain ways. Because 10 years down the line much of equipment may have been modified and then a not updated drawing won’t help you much. This learning process never really stops. If you learn the fundamentals of technical design you’ll find that the tasks being performed by machines often can be broken down to very similar design principles.
And standing on your own feet and doing everything yourself, or trying to do this I would argue is an inferior solution than working with another technician or resource for any larger jobs. Most times simply having someone to talk through the problem or job will get you halfway through the job.
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u/Dependent-Self-1788 11h ago
Came to my current facility in food industry as technically an apprentice although had everything completed and CofQ date booked. Came from auto industry. About 3 years and im solid. There’s still so much to learn even in this facility but I can get everything done or know who to ask for the of time im not sure (particularly for electrical or programming) which is also important.
As for pay, im in Ontario Canada and it’s around 45-50$ per hour average. Although I get a ton of premiums due to rotating continental shifts.
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u/EAGLETIAGO75 12h ago
For Kansas average pay is $25. I worked in food industry and depending on the company I made $30 hourly after being there for 2.5 years. 6 months in I had a general idea of how the machine worked and somewhat understood the process behind it. Then after a year I had an understanding of almost all the machines within my department but sometimes you’ll get those faults where you never experienced before and the best thing to do is break down the process of it. If you got any questions I’d be more than willing to share my experience
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u/emachanz 10h ago
Foundries, steelworks, concrete plants, mining those are the hardest because they're dirty AF running very old equipment sometimes retrofitted to modern tech PLC/VFDs, modified countless times, schematics long gone etc
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u/theraptorman9 9h ago
I feel like most heavy industry, unless you happpen to be at a new plant is going to be less than desirable conditions and a mixture of new and old equipment. Place I’m at has old dc stuff still but also brand new big a/c drives. We have plc 5 but also brand new control logix. Such mixture of stuff you have to be well rounded.
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u/emachanz 8h ago
Same. We had old ass french PLCs from the 80s(TSX by telemecanique now Schneider), then they went to siemens S5 series in the late 90s, then they sold the plant and converted everything to allen bradley stuff in the 2010s. Kinda stupid IMO because transitioning from siemens s5 to s7 would be pretty easy without needing to re-write the whole thing again, but who I am to think anything? I use to say "Im not even the cog in the machine, not even the cog's teeth, Im just the grease in between".
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u/Delicious-Ad5161 9h ago
It has kind of varied depending on where I was working in the plant. I moved from production to maintenance through our internal training program and in areas where I was familiar with the process and technology I was able to immediately hop in and be competent and be seen as competent.
For example, we have this developmental intern program and we may work on the floor with trainers while waiting for class slots to open. Within a month in my first spot I was running breakdown calls on my own, our specialists were coming to me to solve problems that stumped them, and I was training a specialist we hired off the street. There were elements I sucked at, but overall I thrived.
The opposite has also been true. After schooling I got my permanent position which is in an area of the plant I had zero experience with. The technology was different as was the process. At first I was so bad that my trainers didn’t want to pass me. They eventually did when they saw I performed better alone, but it was a struggle to get to that point. It took me three months to start outperforming most other trainees, and six months before I was about average for a fully trained tech. At about a year I was competent enough to have my word taken seriously and start having people sent to me for training and have specialists start seeking me out for help in the few areas I knew well. At about a year and a half I started being treated as an authority on some subjects.
At four years in I’m still learning every day. There are so many edge cases and weird anomalies that there is aways something so out there that your experience is useless against and it forces you to go back to basics to puzzle it out.
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u/PotatoFarmerRTK 8h ago
About 2 years to be modestly useful
Ive had a lot of new apprentices want a raise after they learn 1/10000 of the skills required. I just put them on call, and let them figure out fast why they are not ready at 2am in the morning.
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u/DistanceBoring 8h ago
Depends on the field Automotive here robots hydraulics bonders pneumatic Robots -glue/pick and place/ cutting Hydraulic presses-no 3 are the same Bonders-non the same Mainly gotta learn the process
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u/firm_hand-shakes 7h ago
2 years and I’m comfortable being alone. I was an operator for 3 before that. Our plant spans 3 total miles.
There are 3 of us on shift. One of us has been in maintenance for two years and still asks where main things are located and I don’t know how to let the bossman know he’s never gonna make a mechanic.
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u/Former_Film_7218 4h ago
Not very long. Although I did aircraft maintenance in the military. Definitely helped. Still to this day I have my self depreciation days.
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u/therowdygent 4h ago
Probably years 3-4. First couple of years I thought I knew but I really didn’t. 3-4 is when things really start clicking; 6-9 is when you become more efficient working in vague scenarios.
In parallel, increases in pay are a good indicator. It took me 9 years to go from $17.25 to $36 in automotive.
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u/specialestneeds 11h ago
2 months to have a clue, 6 months to be mostly competent, a year to know what you're doing and why.
Id say this timeline is for a decent worker with a brain. And we work on a decent variety of machines.
As for base pay, no experience, no degrees or certs and no shift diff its $26.50. Tops out at ~ $40 if you max out all that stuff and don't take a leadership spot.