VandemoorteleStrengthening Reliability Engineering and the maintenance approach

Challenge

Vandemoortele is a leading family-owned company with a history dating back to 1899 and a strong reputation for high-quality margarines, frying fats, and bakery products. In a production environment where safety, quality, food safety, and continuity are central, technical reliability is a critical success factor.

To further strengthen this position, management decided to structurally expand the internal team around Reliability Engineering. The ambition went beyond simply increasing knowledge. Vandemoortele wanted to establish Reliability Engineering as a professional discipline with a clear methodology, a standardized way of working, and a measurable impact on asset reliability and performance.

Approach

For this project, Vandemoortele turned to Mainnovation as an expert in Maintenance and Asset Management. Through a structured Reliability Engineering Roadmap, the Reliability Engineers were guided in applying proven Reliability Engineering techniques. The focus was on analyzing failure behavior, identifying critical components, and supporting maintenance strategies based on risk and impact on production.

The support combined targeted training with coaching on real installations. As a result, the methodology was not only explained in theory, but immediately applied to current issues within the production environment.

In addition, Mainnovation supported the team in developing the maintenance plan for a new production line. Using Reliability Engineering methods and technical expertise, the critical components were systematically identified and maintenance strategies were defined to support safety, product quality, reliability, and high uptime. Reliability Engineering was thus used as a steering tool for making well-founded maintenance and investment decisions.

Mainnovation’s added value

In addition to strengthening the content capabilities of the Reliability Engineering team, the project also focused on structural embedding. Together with the team, Mainnovation developed standardized workflows for creating and managing maintenance plans, defining spare parts strategies, and conducting Reliability Engineering analyses.

This standardization ensures a uniform and efficient way of working within the department and increases transparency in decision-making. Practical templates were also developed to support collaboration between Reliability Engineering, production, and the technical department.

The result is a professionally developed Reliability Engineering approach that leads to consistent decision-making, better-founded maintenance strategies, and further maturity growth of the maintenance organization.