Amarins Tjalsma is a maintenance engineer at Omrin, a Dutch waste collection and processing company dedicated to circularity and sustainability. Their high-tech facilities recycle, reuse and upcycle waste, as well as generate renewable energy. I got to know Amarins as a very passionate maintenance professional during some training I delivered, and was delighted to have the opportunity to sit down with her and get her perspective on maintenance challenges and opportunities.
How we work, what we do and why we do it are all important directives in enterprise asset management (EAM). These take a central place in Amarins’ approach to maintenance management and highlight a challenge familiar to many industrial organizations. Keeping operations efficient, minimizing downtime, and ensuring safety—all while facing a skilled labor shortage—is no small task.
In our conversation, Amarins outlined three key challenges that hinder maintenance efficiency. These challenges highlight the need for a structured, data-driven approach, in which an EAM system can play a critical role:
Challenge 1: Disconnected Workflows & Lack of Data Visibility
At Omrin, maintenance teams rely on data from machines, field reports, and historical records to diagnose and prevent issues. But without structured workflows, getting a clear picture of asset health is difficult.
EAM systems can play a key role in centralizing the data from machines, field reports and observations. By combining all data in one platform, you ensure real-time visibility and open up data-driven decision making to a much larger pool of stakeholders. Analyzing the data gives way to further improvements, for example by enabling more accurate and effective preventive maintenance strategies. Mobile access is imperative for closing the loop. By giving the people that are closest to the assets direct actionable insights, in the palm of their hands, you realize data-driven insights where it matters most – and where the impact is most significant.
Challenge 2: Gaps in Cross-Department Collaboration
Maintenance doesn’t happen in isolation. Amarins stresses that at Omrin, there is very much a culture of ‘we are all in this together’. Still, collaboration is not self-evident. Without clear coordination and communication, misalignment leads to delays and inefficiencies.
"Better collaboration isn’t a KPI. And while ‘no incidents’ is a clear as day agreement, how do you realize this? The maintenance department knows what is needed to get the job done – but how do we work as safe as possible? This is the collaboration we are after."
Advanced EAM solutions offer an integrated approach to maintenance, reliability and safety. Workflows are streamlined, and approvals and safety protocols fully integrated into the operations and maintenance work order management cycles. A single-source-of-truth EAM platform highly benefits from this interdepartmental collaboration: not only is it more efficient for all parties involved, but they also add their expertise to the process and translate this into data. In order to elevate your organizational efficiency and productivity, foster the alignment between teams, increase the collaboration, enhance the communication and in turn, increase your uptime, reliability and safety. Work better, together.
Challenge 3: Knowledge Retention & Workforce Challenges
Like many industrial companies, Omrin faces a reliance on experienced technicians and operators whose knowledge isn’t always documented. The dependency this creates is a big risk.
"Some people in our organization are walking encyclopedias. That’s great, but it also creates dependency. We need to ensure that knowledge isn’t lost."
Additionally, generational differences impact innovation: younger employees embrace technology, while experienced workers rely on hands-on troubleshooting.
As to what this means, Amarins shares a very compelling example: a new factory is being built. This offers the perfect opportunity to invest in innovation, to future-proof the business and prepare for more modern ways of working. An EAM platform that enables these innovations by interfacing or integrating with them offers a lot of benefits. These modern technologies thrive on the amount of data the EAM platform can offer. Further digitization of critical information, work instructions and documentation decreases the dependency on individuals, and bridges the knowledge and skill gaps for new generations joining the workforce.
Discussing some of these technologies, Amarins clearly sees AI and automation as key to making maintenance easier and more efficient:
"We need to make work as easy as possible. AI can provide real-time insights and guidance. It can save a lot of time, time which can be used to further optimize other and new processes."
Still, Amarins admits, technicians love to get their hands dirty, an attitude towards maintenance that is unlikely to change. Taking this into consideration, it becomes evident that freeing up valuable time for skilled laborers to indeed get their hands dirty is an important objective. Technology and software alike should aim to reduce the mundane, and boost the exceptional.
Conclusion
Omrin’s challenges are common across industries. To move from reactive to proactive maintenance, organizations need to invest in data-driven decision-making, collaboration, and knowledge retention. An EAM system supports these initiatives by acting as a central hub and spoke system. It collects and collates machine data, field reports and maintenance history in one system. Because digital workflows are interconnected, communication and collaboration between maintenance, operations and safety teams is improved. The central data source ensures knowledge retention and provides the foundation upon which technologies like AI can thrive.
For organizations like Omrin, deploying these strategies is about more than maintaining assets. It is imperative in ensuring business resilience and achieving sustainable, long-term success.
