Director Maintenance, Asset, and Reliability
Posted Sep 1, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026
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Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
About your past
Tell me about a time you took a plant's maintenance culture from reactive firefighting to proactive, planned maintenance. What did you actually change, and how long did it take to see results?
What they are checking: whether the candidate has real, hands-on experience driving the reactive-to-proactive shift the role demands, not just familiarity with the concept
Tell me about a time you had to hold a union maintenance workforce accountable for something they were resistant to, like PM compliance or documenting abnormalities. How did you get buy-in without damaging the relationship?
What they are checking: credibility and track record operating inside a organized labor environment where you can't just mandate change
Tell me about a maintenance technical training or upskilling program you built from scratch. How did you measure whether it actually improved reliability?
What they are checking: ability to close the skills gap in the workforce and tie training to measurable outcomes, not just activity
Describe a time you had to make a business case for a maintenance investment or headcount change to plant leadership or finance. How did you frame the cost argument?
What they are checking: financial and business acumen, and ability to translate reliability work into dollars leadership cares about
Tell me about a time you partnered with supply chain, quality, or plant operations on a reliability issue that wasn't purely a maintenance problem. What was your role in getting alignment?
What they are checking: cross-functional influence and whether they see reliability as an isolated department or a shared outcome
What would you do
Say PM compliance is sitting at 60 percent and unplanned downtime is climbing month over month. Where do you start, and what do you look at first to figure out the root cause?
What they are checking: structured diagnostic thinking around reliability metrics and whether they'd jump to blame versus investigate data
If a union steward pushed back on a new preventive maintenance schedule, arguing it violates past practice or adds unfair workload, how would you handle that conversation?
What they are checking: conflict resolution skill and labor relations judgment under real friction, not just theoretical diplomacy
You've got a Mean-Time-Between-Failures number that looks good on paper but breakdowns keep recurring on the same line. What's your hypothesis, and how do you verify it?
What they are checking: whether they know metrics can mask underlying problems and can dig past a surface-level KPI
How do you keep an OSHA or FDA compliance requirement from turning into a paperwork exercise that the floor tunes out?
What they are checking: practical regulatory judgment and whether they can make compliance stick culturally rather than just documenting it
About the work
Walk me through how you've implemented Progressive Maintenance or a similar TPM pillar structure in a plant. What was your rollout sequence and what broke along the way?
What they are checking: depth of actual TPM/PM implementation experience versus textbook knowledge of the framework
How have you used a CMMS like SAP PM or SAP MM to change how a maintenance team actually operates day to day, not just to log work orders?
What they are checking: whether they've driven real behavioral adoption of CMMS tools or just used them passively
Describe a spare parts or MRO management problem you fixed. What was costing the plant money or downtime, and how did you fix the system behind it?
What they are checking: whether they understand spare parts strategy as a reliability lever, not just a warehouse function
How do you decide which failure modes get time-based maintenance versus condition-based monitoring? Give me a real example from your plant.
What they are checking: technical grasp of equipment criticality analysis and whether their PM strategy is data-driven
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As published by Mondelez International.