Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Fred Schenkelberg 3 Comments

CRE Calculator

A key preparation step for the CRE exam is to have and know how to use a simple calculator. I use my smartphone and a calculator app – and I would not be permitted to use the phone during the exam. Same with tablets, computers, and other common tools that we now take for granted.

We allow any silent, hand-held, battery-operated calculator WITHOUT an alphabetic keyboard.
Which is a quote from an ASQ FAQ on exam permissible calculators, see the whole response here.
http://prdweb.asq.org/certification/control/faq/calculator

Showing up ready for the test and having your calculator denied may set you back (time-wise) from having to do the calculations by hand. If taking the exam in the computer-based testing center, they provide a scientific calculator on-screen or a handheld one upon request.

Next is being able to use the calculator. During the CRE exam, the woman next to me was very frustrated and eventually put her calculator away. After the exam, I asked her about the calculator and if the battery died (another preparation step is to install fresh batteries!). She said her husband gave her his calculator as it would be permissible for use during the exam. It was a simple scientific calculator and used reverse Polish notation for calculations. She was not familiar with that input format and rather than spending time learning how to use the calculator proceeded to answer all the questions without the need for calculations. I’m not sure how she did on the exam.

For the CRE the calculator matters – you will need it and need to know how to use it.

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Prep, CRE Preparation Notes Tagged With: cre prep

About Fred Schenkelberg

I am the reliability expert at FMS Reliability, a reliability engineering and management consulting firm I founded in 2004. I left Hewlett Packard (HP)’s Reliability Team, where I helped create a culture of reliability across the corporation, to assist other organizations.

« Product Reliability Participants part 6
Value »

Comments

  1. Steven says

    September 16, 2017 at 5:00 AM

    Actually, I need a scientific calculator for my child. She is a 14 year’s old. I have no idea on scientific calculator. Do you have any recommend scientific calculator? Thanks

    Reply
    • Fred Schenkelberg says

      September 17, 2017 at 12:51 AM

      Hi Steven, sorry I don’t have a recommendation – as most school calculators are too fancy for those preparing for the CRE exam. Ask her teachers. cheers, Fred

      Reply
  2. Rolando Jr. says

    March 2, 2018 at 8:09 PM

    Doing mathematical solution manually is good thing because the knowledge will be kept refreshing but sometimes when you are doubtful with your answer, it will be good if you can have some reference or guidance to make sure your solution is correct. So calculator would be handy in this case. Plus, if you are on doing it on a very short time, calculator would really help you save time.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

[popup type="" link_text="Get Weekly Email Updates" link_class="button" ]

[/popup]

The Accendo Reliablity logo of a sun face in circuit

Please login to have full access.




Lost Password? Click here to have it emailed to you.

Not already a member? It's free and takes only a moment to create an account with your email only.

Join

Your membership brings you all these free resources:

  • Live, monthly reliability webinars & recordings
  • eBooks: Finding Value and Reliability Maturity
  • How To articles & insights
  • Podcasts & additional information within podcast show notes
  • Podcast suggestion box to send us a question or topic for a future episode
  • Course (some with a fee)
  • Largest reliability events calendar
  • Course on a range of topics - coming soon
  • Master reliability classes - coming soon
  • Basic tutorial articles - coming soon
  • With more in the works just for members
Speaking of Reliability podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Dare to Know podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Accendo Reliability Webinar Series podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Articles

  • test
  • test
  • test
  • Your Most Important Business Equation
  • Your Suppliers Can Be a Risk to Your Project

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy