BEMAS Forum Maintenance

Faced with increasingly complex industrial infrastructures and growing technical challenges, maintenance professionals are turning to innovative inspection solutions to strengthen reliability, reduce costs, and ensure the safety of people, tools and installations.

Technologies such as inspection robots, drones, data capture platforms and predictive analytics tools now make it possible to anticipate failures well before they become critical.

In Belgium, companies such as Solvay, Air Liquide, TotalEnergies, Yara and UCB, as well as major players in the steel industry like ArcelorMittal, Industeel and NLMK, increasingly rely on these technologies to guarantee the performance and reliability of their assets.

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Faced with complex industrial infrastructures and growing technical challenges, maintainers are turning to innovative inspection solutions to increase reliability, reduce costs and guarantee the safety of people and tool and machine assets. Technologies such as inspection robots, drones, data capture platforms and predictive analysis tools now make it possible to identify potential failures long before they become critical.
 

In Belgium, industries such as Solvay, Air Liquide, TotalEnergies, Yara and UCB, as well as in the steel sector, companies such as ArcelorMittal, Industeel, and NLMK, are increasingly relying on these new technologies to maintain the performance and safety of their facilities. The Maintenance 2025 Forum is a unique opportunity to discuss these innovations and their impact on all sectors of industry.

In an increasingly competitive and complex economic environment, optimising resources has become an absolute necessity. The challenges facing maintenance teams today are not just related to budgetary constraints and environmental pressures. An equally pressing challenge is the growing shortage of skilled technical profiles who can cope with the ever-increasing demands of the job.

Faced with these realities, maintenance managers play a more crucial role than ever in guaranteeing optimum performance with often limited resources. It is against this complex backdrop that the Maintenance 2024 Forum has chosen as its theme "Doing More with Less: the added value of the maintainer as a performance lever".

The integration of advanced technologies, streamlined processes and methodologies such as predictive maintenance, asset management and automation are possible responses to these challenges. These methods are not only solutions for maximising resources, they also offer training and skills development opportunities for maintainers, helping to fill the gap created by the shortage of technical talent.

To the 2024 programme

Today, maintenance is not only the key to greater competitiveness and sustainability, it is also a strategic weapon. It goes without saying that this is all the more true for the technical teams who are in the vanguard this winter to ensure the reliability of our country's energy supply.

Since the start of the Ukrainian crisis, maintenance has been used as a lever to destabilise the European energy market. For example, technical reasons have been invoked to prevent the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from being commissioned. At the beginning of September, Gazprom announced that Nord Stream 1 could not be restarted after maintenance work because of an oil leak in one of the gas turbines at the compressor station. This "technical problem" led to new record prices on the gas market. At the end of September, both pipelines were seriously damaged by a series of underwater explosions. It is abundantly clear that Russia is managing its energy assets very strategically, to say the least.

Fighting back

It is therefore more necessary than ever for companies to arm themselves against rising energy prices and diminishing security of supply. We can use the same weapon to this end: a strategic maintenance and asset management policy. The technical department can carry out energy improvement projects, but also combat energy wastage in existing installations. Think of eliminating compressed air leaks, ensuring optimum lubrication, cleaning heat exchangers, repairing or replacing leaking steam traps, etc... Today, maintenance is not only the key to greater competitiveness and sustainability, it is also a strategic weapon. It goes without saying that this is all the more true for the technical teams, who are in the vanguard this winter to ensure the reliability of our country's energy supply.

We also awarded the Technical Team of the Year, which went to Takeda. GSK won the audience award.

To the 2023 programme

Maintenance not only contributes to the profitability of activities: it also makes a very significant contribution, although it does not make this clear enough, to meeting the objectives of sustainable development, balancing economic, environmental and social objectives.

This is exactly what the 2022 Maintenance Forum was all about. Sustainable development to the benefit of maintenance activities, limiting climate change by acting on one of the world's biggest energy consumers: the industrial engine, developing value with maintenance and asset management in the face of new economic and ecological challenges, and how to integrate the human factor in the transition to industry 5.0 were just some of the themes raised by our speakers before an audience of more than 80 people. The participants were then able to discuss their personal experiences with our experts and establish privileged links with a view to internal development and the pursuit of excellence.

Forum 2022 also provided an opportunity to present the prize for the technical team of the year in Wallonia. Chaudfontaine won first prize, while Galler won the public votes.

To the 2022 programme

The maintenance function is recognised as a major driver of industrial performance in terms of controlling costs, deadlines and quality. Its impact on the achievement of sustainable development objectives is demonstrated by its undeniable contribution to material and energy savings, the safety of critical installations close to where we live and the preservation of our environment.

Technologies have never been so advanced, mature and accessible. Providing data that is immediately transformed into useful indicators for management purposes, they enable the best decisions to be taken for the operation of facilities and the provision of services.

And yet... it is human and organisational issues that are at the heart of the business, especially in times of instability or crisis. Motivating staff, managing internal and external human resources, aligning a maintenance policy with the company's strategic challenges, and defining a realistic roadmap for gradually achieving 4.0 industrialisation raise a host of questions. These questions give rise to a need for up-to-date, synthetic information, as well as the sharing of ideas and experiences.

The e-forum programme is designed to reflect the multi-dimensional nature (human, technological, organisational, societal) of maintenance, with presentations by people "in the field" illustrating best practice.

To the 2021 programme
 

The industrial world would not be what it is today without good management of maintenance, of its material and... human assets. And yet we don't always measure its technical impact, or its contribution in terms of productivity, performance, cost reduction, staff development, etc.

Because industrial change is exposing our companies to new challenges, because maintenance requires continuous and demanding learning, because more and more of you are joining us and because your day-to-day concerns are important to us, BEMAS is persevering in its mission to provide information and education on maintenance excellence.

In a constantly changing world, how do we manage existing equipment? Should we invest in it or maintain it for a few more years? How do we motivate our teams in the face of the realities of the field and the evolution of technologies, in the face of the difficulties of our professions, how do we concern ourselves with green energy at the centre of a 'zero waste' evolution, how do we maintain or find new economic balances in the service of maintenance?

To the 2020 programme

The industrial world would not be what it is today without good management of maintenance, of its material and... human assets. And yet we don't always measure its technical impact, or its contribution in terms of productivity, performance, cost reduction, staff development, etc.

Because industrial change is exposing our companies to new challenges, because maintenance requires continuous and demanding learning, because more and more of you are joining us and because your day-to-day concerns are important to us, BEMAS is persevering in its mission to provide information and education on maintenance excellence.

In a constantly changing world, how do we manage existing equipment? Should we invest in it or maintain it for a few more years? How do we motivate our teams in the face of the realities of the field and the evolution of technologies, in the face of the difficulties of our professions, how do we concern ourselves with green energy at the centre of a 'zero waste' evolution, how do we maintain or find new economic balances in the service of maintenance?