M4C AIMS to improve market integration, worker mobility and innovation in the MRO (Maintenance Repair and Overhaul) market. This should increase the effectiveness in this rapidly growing sector in North-West Europe (NWE). The MRO market plays a crucial role in modern production facilities. In the first place it must ensure and improve productivity whilst simultaneously, new energy- friendly and efficient technologies are introduced. These innovations are necessary considering we are increasingly facing aging plants, difficult economic conditions and aging staff.

Focus on 5 industry types

Work Package 2 within M4C aims at providing insights into the challenges of MRO companies and at developing plans for coherent policy initiatives and industrial actions regarding innovation, worker mobility and market integration. This will be based on a benchmark and qualitative survey with 400 NWE companies (based in Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands) and on a macroeconomic analysis based on extrapolation of the obtained data (both by country, by sector and for NWE).

The participating partners contracted Mainnovation (a global acting maintenance and asset management consultancy firm) and KPMG (a global acting general consultancy firm) to support them with the development of an effective benchmark approach and to deliver relevant benchmark data as well as macro-economic data and trends necessary to quantify the role of MRO in the current and future economy.

Within the scope of this study the following five specific industry sectors have been included (1):

• Process industry: maintenance of (continuous) production assets of solids, liquids and gases
• Infrastructures: maintenance of road, water, rail and other infrastructure assets, such as ports and airports. But also infrastructure such as (electricity) cables and pipe lines
• Manufacturing: maintenance of manufacturing environment of (discrete) piece production of goods and production of units (with the exception of food (including beverage) and pharmaceutical segment
• Fleet: maintenance of vehicles (excluding cars), vessels and aircraft engaged in professional transport on land (including rail), on water and in the air.
• Food, beverage & pharma: maintenance of the manufacturing environment of piece production of goods and production of units within the food (including beverage) and pharma segment

We aim for a uniform distribution of the 400 participating companies on the five sectors. This is necessary to extrapolate the survey benchmark results to a national level based on macro-economic data and trends.

The survey framework

In order to come up with sound conclusions and recommendations on national and the NWE-region level, the survey methodology is based on quantitative benchmarking and extrapolation. This means that the results from a group of participating companies will be summarized (for example within one industry sector) and based on macro-economic data of the sector extrapolated. As an example we can use the Asset Replacement Value (ARV) of the maintained assets: the total summarized ARV of those participating companies is 200 MEUR and we know their joint need for external capacity from contractors is worth 5 MEUR per annum. Based on the macro-economic ARV-figures of this industry type (approximately 3000 MEUR (= 15 x 200 MEUR)) we can derive that the overall need for external capacity in this industry type has a volume of about 75 MEUR (=15 x 5 MEUR).

As stated above the survey will be based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative information. The information needed to complete the survey focuses on five defined areas of the MRO-sector:

• Maintenance performance: asset- related and maintenance process-related performances such as technical availability, maintenance costs, ARV and technician productivity.
• Human Resource and personnel: focusing on the composition of the maintenance organization, the age distribution of the maintenance crew and expected changes and challenges in the future.
• Innovation: reviewing the remaining lifetime of assets, capital investments, expected end of life measures and future opportunities and challenges.
• Market integration: developments in the collaboration between asset owners, contractors and other service suppliers as well as the development of outsourcing contracts and the outsourcing of types of maintenance personnel.
• Risks: focusing on the current asset technical condition, development of reliability, safety and the impact of (past and future) maintenance cost changes with respect to those topics.

The information needed for this maintenance benchmark survey is composed of several methodologies and standards. In the first place input from the yearly ‘AFIM - Business Survey Observatory Network Maintenance’ has been used, secondly Mainnovation’s Value Driven Maintenance (VDM®) methodology was used to create a KPI-framework for quantitative benchmarking and finally the ‘Global Maintenance and Reliability Indicators - Fitting the Pieces Together, 4th edition, EFNMS and SMRP’ was used for deriving definitions.

The final deliverable of this process is a standard benchmark questionnaire to be used in the four participating countries of M4C and to be completed by all 400 participating companies. The questionnaire will be available in Dutch, English, French and German.

FIGURE 1: CURRENT, BENCHMARKED MRO‡PERFORMANCES

Benchmark data validation approach

To ensure the collected benchmark data is of high quality a few quality assurance activities form part of the survey. As already explained, the used questionnaire is standardized and contains detailed definitions and descriptions. This is the basis for unambiguous answers and results from the participating companies.

All completed questionnaires are validated by a dedicated team of surveyors in each country. These surveyors have been trained by Mainnovation to make sure that validation takes place following the same definitions, being aware of the pitfalls and being able to administrate the benchmark data in a specific developed web based benchmark tool. The validation can take place via site visit, telephone call or conference call depending on the chosen approach per country. For example the M4C-partners from Belgium and The Netherlands choose to contract Mainnovation to execute all 200 joint benchmark surveys. The team of Mainnovation surveyors will use site visits to validate the benchmark data.

The final step in quality assurance of the benchmark data is the use of a web based benchmark database tool. This tool, Mainnovation’s MyVDM. com maintenance benchmark tool, has been upgraded for the M4C-survey. The major benefit is that besides the 400 M4C-surveys over 500 extra benchmark surveys are available based on the same definitions and principles. This gives the M4C-project the opportunity to increase the amount of data and in the end to improve the end results of this benchmark study.

The participating partners in M4C are:

– NV Brabantse OntwikkelingsMaatschappij (BOM) [NL]

– Dutch Institute World Class Maintenance [NL]

– Maintenance Education Consortium [NL]

– Belgian Maintenance Association (BEMAS) [BE]

– Voka: Kamer van Koophandel Antwerpen-Waasland vzw [BE]

– European Federation of National Maintenance Societies vzw (EFNMS) [BE]

– WVIS Verband für Wirtschaft eV Service Industry [DE]

– Association française des ingénieurs responsables de maintenance - AFIM [FR]

Deliverables of the MORE4CORE-project

After finishing the execution of the 400 surveys at company level, the major challenge is to identify the right trends from all collected benchmark data and come to clear conclusions. Findings will be presented on a national and international level (NWE).

The overall findings for the NWE region will be presented during this year’s Euromaintenance conference and will give answers on the overall question how the MRO industry can support the economic growth. Attention will be paid to trends and developments in professionalizing maintenance to reach better performances and increase the competitiveness of the NWE industry. Recommendations will be given on new opportunities, necessary innovations and political support to succeed.

Overall and per industry type conclusions on the development of the national MRO-market will be presented. Each country will receive its own, dedicated report including industry characteristics and recommendations on necessary developments. All above-mentioned reports will be publicly available.

Figure 2: Overview of added value by improving MRO-performances

Finally, all participating companies will receive a free, dedicated benchmark report, which gives them an overview of their MRO-performances and their improvement areas (see figure 1). Based on this benchmark information and potential improvement the companies also gain insights in their added value for their company if they succeed in improving MRO-performances. An example of this information is shown in figure 2.

References: (1) Industry types are based on the definitions used in NVDO Onderhoudskompas, Editie 2011.

Rob van Dongen,

Executive Consultant,

Mainnovation,

rob.van.dongen@mainnovation.com