02. FVI Expert Breakfast

Topic: Beliefs, Complexity & the "Car Radio Paradox" – A Review of the Maintenance Days Salzburg.

• Together with Lydia Höller and Andreas Dankl (Dankl+Partner / MCP) as well as various practical experts, we analyzed the highlights of the industry meeting in Salzburg. The key insights:

• The fatal belief: Maintenance is often still seen as a pure cost factor ("Cost Center") – both by management and by the maintainers themselves. The tenor from Salzburg is clear: We need to change our "beliefs". Maintenance is value creation because it maintains the asset value and extends the Remaining Useful Lifetime (RUL). Doing nothing destroys capital.
• The "Car Radio Paradox" (Complexity Trap): Carsten Finke summed it up: In the past, you could simply swap a car radio (DIN slot, done). Today, the radio is deeply integrated into the vehicle electronics; if it is defective, the car is at a standstill. The same happens in our factories: The systems look the same from the outside, but the internal complexity (software, networking, sensors) has exploded. Simply "repairing" is no longer enough – deep system knowledge is needed.
• Exponential ignorance in management: There is a direct correlation: The higher the hierarchy level (from plant manager to CFO to board), the less knowledge about what maintenance actually does. The consequence: Budgets for training and tools are cut because the "Return on Investment" is not understood.
• Marketing on its own behalf: Maintenance has a massive PR problem. Technicians report numbers and facts that bore the commercial management. We need to learn to sell our performance not in "number of maintenances", but in "secured production value".
• Technology as "eyes and ears": Whether drones for inspections in hazardous areas (Jens Janke) or AI-supported analyses – modern tools are not a gimmick, but necessary to address the shortage of skilled workers. We must relieve the experts from routine tasks (like climbing and searching) so they can make decisions.

Classification: Transparency creates budget

The discussion shows the core problem of the German industry: The technical reality (shop floor) and the commercial decision-making level (top floor) speak different languages.

This is exactly where our philosophy of Operational Intelligence with ADAM comes in:

• Translation instead of reporting: As long as maintenance knowledge is in the heads of experts or in isolated Excel lists, it remains invisible to management – and thus dispensable. ADAM makes technical knowledge and work performed transparent and valuable.
• Making complexity manageable: When systems become as complex as modern cars, we cannot expect every employee to know everything. We need a system ("digital colleague") that manages the complexity in the background and only provides the person with the information they need now (step-by-step, context-based).
• From "mechanic" to manager: We support the transformation of the maintainer from a mere "firefighter" (reacting to defects) to a confident manager of their assets. Those who have data and master processes do not appear as supplicants to the board, but as guarantors of production security.

Conclusion: We must stop hiding maintenance. We must give it the digital tools to explain itself and prove its value. Only in this way will the "cost block" become a strategic competitive advantage.