We’re excited to announce the launch of our new awards, designed to celebrate the innovative role you, our readers, play in adding value to the companies and industry you work for.
Maintenance & Engineering’s mission has always been to encourage the pursuit of excellence in asset management, engineering, and maintenance throughout the manufacturing and process industries, informing and educating maintenance professionals across the UK’s industrial, commercial and public sectors.
Maintenance is too often seen as an overhead – a business cost subject to random cuts – rather than part of a properly structured asset management strategy, working in partnership with production to add value to an organisation by reducing plant and machinery downtime, increasing productivity, improving efficiency and leading, in turn, to increased profitability.
We think the work of hard-working and skilled professionals in this field deserves to be properly and fully recognised.
So we’re excited to be able to announce the launch, with this issue, of the Maintenance & Engineering Excellence Awards.
We are convinced that the achievements of the industry merit recognition through an awards event of this type. We intend to make these awards the leading event of their kind in the sector, highlighting the maintenance engineering aspects of the many exciting developments that are under way in manufacturing and related industries.
Entries are open now. We’re looking for examples of excellence in 14 categories, with an overarching Excellence Award for the best overall – see details below.
Shortlisted entries will be announced in an upcoming issue of M&E. There’ll be an Awards event at a central London venue in November, and the November/December issue of M&E will be a very special Awards issue, showcasing the winners of this year’s awards and highlights from the event.
As well as entries, we are also looking for sponsors, including headline sponsors for the event overall and for each award category.
The awards are open to companies of all sizes and individuals engaged in UK manufacturing industry (including the process and offshore sectors and utilities) and their supply chains, as well as academic institutions undertaking collaborative R&D projects.
The M&E Excellence Awards promise to be a unique and exciting event, unlike any other in this sector. We think they’ll become a fixture in the industry’s events calendar. We want to hear about all the excellent and innovative projects out there to give them the recognition they deserve. Think: what’s going on at your firm that deserves a wider audience? Don’t miss your chance to get involved – enter now!
If you’re interested in details of sponsorship, contact Commercial Director Fawad Minhas on 01892 553149 or email fawad@maintenanceandengineering.com
Award categories
Maintenance & Engineering Excellence Award
This award will go to the entry from any category which, in the opinion of the editor, is the most deserving of a special accolade on the basis of innovation, productivity or potential impact across industry.
Small Maintenance Project of the Year
This category covers maintenance, upgrade or enhancement projects, including retrofitting or the introduction of new systems or procedures, on a small scale – not plant wide but affecting a single machine or machine type or a single production line.
Large Maintenance Project of the Year
Entries for this category should be maintenance, upgrade or enhancement projects including retrofitting or the introduction of new systems or procedures, undertaken across a complete plant or organisation, which is demonstrating significant improvements in productivity/efficiency or reductions in costs or downtime.
Product Innovation of the Year
This award is for a newly–introduced product for use by maintenance personnel which employs new technology or applies it in a new way and has potential to make a testing, diagnostic, maintenance/repair or monitoring procedure significantly more efficient.
Process Innovation of the Year
This award recognises the application of new technology or the use of technology in a new way to improve the efficiency of a complete manufacturing or diagnostic process or production line/cell.
Training Initiative of the Year
This award recognises excellence in a training or outreach programme or initiative designed to improve the skills of the workforce or to help or encourage them to acquire new skills – including school-leavers, apprentices, graduates, and experienced staff.
Diversity Prize
This prize will recognise exceptional efforts to attract, recruit and retain employees from a diverse range of backgrounds, both ethnic and gender.
Health and Safety Award
This award will go to a company or team for a campaign that has demonstrated innovative thinking in bringing about a significant reduction in risk to the safety and health of its workforce or the public.
Non-Destructive Testing
This award is for a new technique or technology, or a new application of an existing technique or technology, which has brought about a significant breakthrough in the ability to undertake non-destructive testing.
Factories of the Future Development
This award will recognise excellence and innovation in the application of smart or Industry 4.0 technologies including digital analytics, the internet of things, augmented and virtual reality, the use of cobots, and artificial intelligence in improving the efficiency of the modern factory.
Energy Efficiency
An award to recognise the application of an innovative technique or thinking in order to bring about a significant decrease in the energy use of a plant or process.
Predictive Maintenance
An award to recognise excellence and innovation in the collection and analysis of data and its use to reduce downtime and failure through effective use of the data for identifying and predicting potential failure.
Asset Management
This award will recognise excellence, innovation and efficiency in the management of assets across a company or plant, including assets not directly related to production processes – for example, building management.
New Technology/Disruptor Award
An award to recognise a new technology or other development which is likely, in the opinion of the judges, to have the greatest impact on industry and productivity as a whole.
Employer of the year award
This award will go to a company or organisation which has demonstrated excellence in all aspects of its relationship with its workforce, from recruitment and training/development to wellbeing.
Entries should cover projects undertaken or completed up to 31 March 2019 and should include evidence of the benefits the project has brought about as well as a selection of images to illustrate it.
Entry is free. Enter here.