Accelerator Reliability Workshop

Maintainability and customer service operations at IBA

Not scheduled

Auditorium (iThemba LABS)

Oral

Speaker

Mr Cedric Soblet (IBA)

Description

Throughout the 25 years of IBA’s history, the installed base of the company’s main accelerator based products (Proton therapy Centres, radioisotope producing cyclotrons as well as sterilization and ionisation e-beam solutions) has known a continuous growth. Indeed, currently, the number of systems is just under the 200 mark, spread over all continents. Moreover, the future looks quite bright thus pushing this barrier further and further. So amidst the continuous mission of being number one in developing high end accelerator based medical and industrial solutions, IBA must also strive to develop robust, reliable and maintainable systems necessary for a sustainable growth. Up to now the activities supposed to enforce these attributes were spread around the organization leading to an enormous amount of uncoordinated efforts that have nevertheless contributed positively to the products quality. On the other hand, it has become quite clear that a coordinated program is necessary to better concentrate the organizations investments. For this reason, a dedicated group named Maintainability has been created to lead the way to highly reliable, robust and maintainable products. More than influencing the development phases of a product the group must also play an important role in improving the installed base through close relations with the Customer Service Operations group whose main goal is customer satisfaction. This group constituted of highly trained personnel in various areas (field engineers, spare parts management, configuration management) equipped with the right tools (CMMS, IBA Store) and clear operating procedures as well as sitting on an efficient back office, is becoming the main focal point for the improvement of the way products are designed to be more reliable and maintainable. A part from their day to day mission they feed the development teams with all their rich experiences from the field. The mission of the maintainability group will thus be to make sure that the right pains are addressed in order to increase the value of our products in the eyes of our clients.