Safety in ship repair is no longer a checklist of protective gear, permits and audits. It is a strategic capability that shapes operational efficiency, customer trust and long‑term competitiveness

When experienced maintenance professionals retire, they take more than years of service with them. They may also take knowledge that has never been written down. AI promises a new way to capture that expertise, but it raises an uncomfortable question: if machines increasingly provide the answers, how will the next generation learn to find them?

European industry is investing heavily in sustainability, from emissions targets and ESG reporting to increasingly sophisticated reporting systems. For maintenance and reliability professionals, a major opportunity remains on the factory floor.

People often judge maintenance by cost rather than contribution. Yet the better it performs, the less visible its value becomes, notes Katalin Magyar, former banker and current co-director of family-owned Hungarian maintenance specialist Trans Lex Work (TLW).

Maintenance teams rarely suffer from a complete lack of information. In many industrial organizations, the opposite is true. Work orders, inspection checklists, condition notes, photographs, vibration readings, oil analysis results, temperature logs, spare parts records, safety observations, and failure reports are created every day. The amount of maintenance data keeps growing, but the practical value of that data depends on whether it can explain what is happening to assets over time.