During my 16-year career with the Royal Netherlands Air Force, I learned and experienced that having the right spare parts available or not affects the availability of technical systems. Aircraft stood still at Volkel Air Base due to a shortage of spare parts, while those in Kleine-Brogel in Belgium (68 km south) were in stock. For so-called consumables, I exchanged parts monthly with my Belgian colleagues. As a result, we solved each other's shortages and improved the availability of spare parts and thus the deployability of the aircraft.

The ongoing global discussion of how to solve energy storage, would find a great solution in hydrogen technology.

Technology group Wärtsilä has signed an accord with Global Energy Ventures (GEV) of Australia, a company specialised in delivering compressed shipping solutions for transporting energy to regional markets. The two companies will cooperate on the inclusion of Wärtsilä propulsion systems in GEV’s compressed hydrogen (C-H2) ships.

SKF has extended its range of tachometers, which can help manufacturing companies to optimize their condition monitoring on their production operations.

ODVA  announced that it has entered into separate agreements to further integrate FDT and FDI technologies into EtherNet/IP™. Additional device description work on the next generation xDS™ for CIP™ devices also continues to move forward. 

Thirty-five years after the Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya was the first woman to take a spacewalk, a new historical event took place above our heads on 18 October 2019. Two Nasa astronauts took the first all-female spacewalk. It was not just for fun, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir were responsible for replacing defective equipment from the International Space Station (ISS), and in that way also formed the first female maintenance team in the space.

Euromaintenance 2016 will take place in Athens at the end of May. It is the ideal moment to reflect on maintenance in a European context. Euromaintenance is known as the summit for all involved in maintenance across Europe, it’s the place to be. The conference, with the support of the EFNMS, is the only commercially independent conference covering the topics we deal with in the maintenance world.