MORE4CORE

Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul for Competitive Regions in North-West Europe (MORE4CORE) started in 2013 for a period of 2.5 years with the financial support of the Interreg IVB programme of the European Union. Partners from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and France joined forces to put maintenance on the European map.

MORE4CORE brings together industry (asset owners and service providers), policymakers and research institutions in Europe. This 'triple helix' structure enables cooperation across national borders in the fields of innovation, employee mobility and market integration in the area of maintenance and asset management. The project also looks after the interests of European policymakers and politicians, with the EFNMS as the European federation, among others. MORE4CORE, as a unique project, is already well known to European policymakers and this offers opportunities in the future for EU support of maintenance and asset management projects.

In order to get a good idea of the impact that maintenance and asset management have on our economy in North-West Europe, MORE4CORE is currently conducting a study. In each of the participating countries about 100 companies are currently being benchmarked. These results will be used, among other things, to eventually write a macro-economic impact study. Each country will produce its own national report, but MORE4CORE will also publish an overarching North-West European report which will address the similarities and differences between the countries.

Increasing employee mobility within Europe is an important objective of the MORE4CORE project. A major obstacle here is the lack of transparency regarding the competences of maintenance personnel. The project is trying to offer a solution here in the form of a "European Maintenance Skill Passport" framework. A kind of portfolio that contains information about someone's acquired and validated competences in the maintenance field.

Academic institutions around the world work on maintenance and asset management. Every year, many new insights are gained with a potential added value for the business world. MORE4CORE tries to stimulate this shift from theory to practice by bringing these two worlds together. The project is also looking to the future, which is why, with input from industry and academia, it is developing a so-called "Strategic Research Agenda", a vision document that will mainly focus on technologies such as robotics, 3D printing, big data, etc. Again, we see here a clear overlap with the spearheads put forward by the European Commission.

• The Netherlands
  • Brabantse OntwikkelingsMaatschappij (BOM);
  • Dutch Institute World Class Maintenance;
  • Stichting Maintenance Education Consortium (MEC)
• Belgium
  • The Belgian Maintenance Association (BEMAS);
  • Chamber of Commerce Antwerp-Waasland (Voka);
• France
  • Association Française des ingénieurs et responsables de maintenace (AFIM);
• Germany
  • Wirtschaftsverband für Industrieservice (WVIS) ;
• Europe
  • European Federation of National Maintenance Associations (EFNMS).

Together these partners represent more than 1,000 companies with over 500,000 employees, responsible for 57 billion euros of assets under management. MORE4CORE is the first collaboration of its kind and scale in Europe. The project will run from 2013 to 2015. More information can be obtained via info@bemas.org.