DHL Aviation named Technical Team of the Year 2024, Unilin wins audience award

The highlight of the evening was the announcement of the winners. The professional jury recognised the DHL Aviation team as the Technical Team of the Year and praised DHL's technical service for their impressive achievements in delivering technological improvements, which resulted in remarkable financial savings and a significant reduction in delivery errors. The switch from external to internal staff within the technical service was identified as a crucial factor in their success.

Also notable were figures indicating a significant increase in satisfaction within the DHL Aviation team, by as much as 20 per cent in just a few years. Initiatives from within the team, such as focus on safety, energy and environment, and continuous improvements, are driving these improvements, demonstrating a positive impact on team engagement and satisfaction, as well as overall efficiency and quality.

In addition, Unilin was awarded the audience award for their continuous efforts to eliminate breakdowns and failures through advanced asset performance management tools and root cause analysis. The audience recognised Unilin as a deserved winner because of their commitment to continuous improvement and innovation in the field of technical maintenance.

Praise was also given to the other finalists, Cirqui and Fluvius. The judges complimented Cirqui for their excellent training management and expansion abroad, while Fluvius was praised for their integration of different work systems and technical services, resulting in a significant increase in customer satisfaction.

DHL Aviation
Building a high-performance in-house Technical Department for new sorting facility

Presentation by Peter Lobbinger (Manager Reliability Engineering) & Jan Verelst (Duty Manager Maintenance)

DHL Aviation's new sorting facility in Steenokkerzeel opened in 2017. The MHE Maintenance team is responsible for keeping this facility running. At the time, they started with just under 20 people, who had to become fully familiar with the new technology. Over the past few years, the team has grown to some 60 people, who all contribute to the continuous improvement of the technology and operation. Furthermore, the maintenance organisation has also grown: they strive to create the safest possible working environment, actively work on operational KPIs, and work closely with schools to recruit the necessary technical profiles. In addition, the maintenance team also takes on a major role as a compliance partner as well as in the waste and energy team.

The team is fully autonomous for maintenance, both preventive and corrective. This is followed up by the necessary reports and analyses. Finally, the team is highly motivated to get the best out of themselves every day. The colleagues go through fire for each other, and prove it every day.

Fluvius

Successfully shaping an integration process for technicians

Presentation by Geert Gifford (Gas team leader)

Fluvius' gas service team is responsible for operating the gas network and gas cabins. They commission the gas networks, operate and maintain the network, repair faults, detect leaks, do condition-based maintenance on cabins.... The team of 18 people guarantees a safe and secure gas supply for every customer, including an on-call service available 24/7. The team received additional municipalities under their care in recent years following the integration of Eandis and Infrax into Fluvius, without any additional colleagues. At the same time, all IT systems were reduced to 1 tool for both planning, GIS, SAP, logistics, waiting... In addition, they also need to make a big effort on energy transiication on the site to meet the 2050 climate targets, including reducing methane emissions by half by 2030 and injecting biogas into the existing natural gas grid.

Cirqui

Digitisation of service activities and site-related documents

Presentation by Bart Van Herck (BU Manager) & Pawandeep Singh(Account Manager)

This technical service department is responsible for the maintenance of professional craft bakery machines and industrial bakery production lines. The multi-skilled technicians thus contribute to the continuity of the primary food chain. Previously, technicians had to pull their plan and mainly put out fires. By putting their mindset on service as their core focus, and thanks to the implementation of a digital service management system, the technicians can also do more preventive maintenance and the team has expanded significantly in recent years.

Unilin

Implementing digitalisation and best practices in operational Asset Management

Presentation by Filip De Keyser (Manager Reliability Engineering) & Kurt Dhaene (Manager Reliability Engineering)

Unilin's operational asset management team consists of 4 complementary areas of work: design for maintenance, maintenance 4.0, digitals maintenance tools and value driven maintenance (VDM) methodology. Through these, they aim to further professionalise and standardise local maintenance teams. Recently, they have made great strides in the operational management of assets for which they have developed several tools in-house, which are now being used by local technical services:

1. The asset performance tool is a digital tool that monitors plant availability and records minor and major recurring incidents as well as major incidents on the production lines.

2. Working with 'typicals' that describe a generic plant in use at multiple sites to more easily determine failure patterns and maintenance strategies

3. BEC is a digital tool that easily manages inspection rounds for both a maintenance and production department to monitor plant condition during various minor maintenance and cleaning tasks4

4. All documentation is kept in the DMS management system to increase accessibility, version control and uniformity, providing digital support to technicians during a shutdown.

5. The different sites are supported according to their needs. In addition, a community is built between the different sites to share best practices and document them afterwards.