Industry standards maintenance or engineer

I'm curious about some of the automation industry standards.
To get the top "mechanic" position within company X it seems
the mechanic will have to be able to develop PLC programs to replace old equipment including engineering an entire new backplane for the cabinet and develop a Panel View or Wonder-ware application to integrate into it.

It seems to me that some of this work should be done by an actual engineer, not a "maintenance mechanic".

Any thoughts?

You see a lot of job ad's and job descriptions with these requirements but no one at the facility has them.

I think it scares offa lot of good applicants and most of it is manager and HR generated and they really don't have a concept of what they are requiring or asking for really IMHO.

The PLC kid is probably correct.
I help to place adult students so I see that every day. The HR body usually has no clue what those words mean or the maint foreman has wishful thinking.
They ask for PLC programming but what they really want is someone who can trouble shoot a PLC controlled machine.

yeah same here.

btw it would be nice to "plus" someones message instead of typing all this