We first started working with Risk Prevention in 2009, in the wake of increasing media coverage of metro accidents, fire hazards and elevators mishaps. The government started to put more efforts on enforcing existing regulations and new rules were put in place, while companies’ managers also became more aware of safety issues.

This interview of Siveco China’s General Manager was published in China Plant Engineering in December 2011.

The special “Lean Manufacturing” issue of our newsletter, published in June 2010, turned out to be very controversial. I perhaps should not have been surprised, as the title of my editorial was a punchy “Lean & TPM: beyond the hype, delivering sustainable results”… I highlighted the specifities of maintenance in China, which we are rather familiar with, and explained why they should be taken into account: a Lean production process puts enormous pressure on equipment reliability, a major weakness at most plants. One of the key points I raised was the necessity to reduce the breakdown rate before implementing autonomous maintenance activities as part of...

How many reports have you read in the past few months, calling for more automation in Chinese factories, in response to raising labor cost? Reading specialized magazines, you may be tempted to think that automation will save China by preventing all MNCs from moving to the cheaper Vietnam. There is recurrent talk about “smart plants”, often for the purpose of “replacing people”. Perhaps the most remarkable of all claims has been Foxconn announcement that they will install 1 million robots in their Chinese assembly plants in the next 3...

In the past few months we have received more and more enquiries from customers about our SOA capabilities. Apparently, some of the “EAM” software vendors have based their marketing largely on claiming to have an all-powerful Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), while other maintenance software would be “rigid” and “closed”.

This article is a based on a presentation given by Siveco China’s GM Bruno Lhopiteau at the 6th Process Industry Engineering & Maintenance Congress in Shanghai on September 6-7.