Conference for decision-makers in maintenance development

The Maintenance Summit, the heavyweight conference for business management and maintenance development decision makers, will be held on 10- 11 March 2020. This year’s subtitle is “Innovation and digitalisation for increased reliability”. It follows up on the success of the first Maintenance Summit in 2018, which offered a fully-fledged programme of keynote speakers, study visits and “getting to know you” dinners.

Supporting the event are the Maintenance Fair and the national organisation, Svenskt Underhåll (Swedish Maintenance). We took the pulse of Anna Jarnö, Business Manager for the Maintenance Fair, and Torsten Ekström, CEO of Svenskt Underhåll, which will publish the upcoming programme in the next few days.

You chair the programme council behind the Maintenance Summit, the conference which is organised in parallel with the Maintenance Fair. What has been your thinking for the upcoming programme, and is there anything you can share already?

– It feels exciting to be able to present a forward-looking programme focused on the future of smart maintenance, where internationally recognised speakers will present their views about innovation and digitalisation, Torsten says. Among others, we have Terrence O’Hanlon from the USA, who will talk about Reliability Leadership and Digitalisation.

The second day will focus on sustainability, another very important area that is talked about more and more often, Torsten continues. Maintenance plays an essential role in increasing the sustainability of Sweden’s industry and infrastructure. We will get to know some of the foremost practitioners in this area, including Staffan Söderberg, who has been globally active on sustainability for some time.

The conference premiered in 2018. Why is it organised in parallel with the Maintenance Fair?

– The purpose of the conference is to highlight burning issues for maintenance development, says Anna Jarnö. As a result of digitalisation and Industry 4.0, the opportunities to work predictively with maintenance-related interventions have improved tremendously, which of course will have consequences for investments, among other things. For business executives and decision makers in the industry, it is about adapting the business to new conditions in order to remain competitive.

The conference and the Maintenance Fair both have an important function in this respect. The benefits are huge when people in senior management get the chance to meet and discuss common issues and challenges in, for example, digitalisation and leadership, concludes Anna.

More information about the Maintenance Summit and the Maintenance Fair can be found on en.underhall.se.