WCEAM

World Congress on Engineering Asset Management 2009

The 4th World Congress on Engineering Asset Management, WCEAM 2009, was held at the Ledra Marriott Hotel in Athens, Greece from 28 to 30 September 2009, represented a milestone in the history of WCEAM. It was the first to be organised under the auspices of the newly formed International Society of Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM) who hosted WCEAM on an annual basis as its forum for exchange of information on recent advances in this rapidly growing field. WCEAM 2009 was organised with the invaluable support of the newly formed Hellenic Maintenance Society (HMS) in Greece, who acted as the local host.

After the inaugural WCEAM in July 2006 in the Gold Coast, Australia, visioned and initiated by the CRC for Integrated Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM) and organised in conjunction with the International Conference on Maintenance Societies (ICOMS) hosted by the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia (MESA) and the International Maintenance Systems (IMS) Conference hosted by the Intelligent Maintenance Centre (IMS Centre), USA, the 2nd WCEAM was co-organised with the Condition Monitoring Conference hosted by the British Institute for Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT) in April 2007 in Harrogate, UK . The third congress in the series was organised in Beijing in October 2008 by a consortium comprising the Division of Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the China Association of Plant Engineering, the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on the Intelligent Maintenance Systems Center (IMS), USA, the Diagnosis and Self Recovery Engineering Research Centre at Beijing Chemical Technology University and CIEAM.

The theme of WCEAM 2009 was "Engineering Asset Lifecycle Management – A 2020 Vision for a Sustainable Future" and fit well with the lessons learnt from the recent financial and economical crises that impacted severely on the global economy and showed that a sustainable future requires consideration of the various lifecycle aspects of business, industrial and public good activities in their technical, organisational, economic, environmental and societal dimensions. The management of engineering assets over its lifecycle, which includes maintenance at its core, is a crucial element for global business sustainability and its importance is gradually being recognised by corporate senior management. Our seven distinguished keynotes at WCEAM 2009 presented developments in a number of these areas.

ISEAM envisions WCEAM as a global annual forum that promotes the interdisciplinary aspects of Engineering Asset Management (EAM). In view of this vision, WCEAM seeks to promote collaboration between organisations who share similar objectives and where particular matters of common interests are discussed. The program for this year included a number of special sessions organised by the EFNMS, EURENSEAM and the Manufacturing Technology Platform (MTP) on Maintenance for Sustainable Manufacturing (M4SM) of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems international program (IMS). In addition, a session on modern maintenance training along with a dedicated e-training workshop on Maintenance Management was organised by the EU project, "iLearn2Main".

WCEAM 2009 brought together over 170 leading academics, industry practitioners and research scientists from 29 countries to:

Advance the body of knowledge in Engineering Asset Management (EAM),
Strengthen the link between industry, academia and research,
Promote the development and application of research, and
Showcase state-of-the-art technologies.

Over 120 scientific and technical presentations reported outputs of research and development activities as well as the application of knowledge in the practical aspects of: