Industry, Centres of expertise and Education institutes combined their forces to reduce the growing shortage of technicians and maintenance personal in the Netherlands. The Maintenance Education Consortium is a foundation of Kenteq, the Dutch Centre of Expertise for Technology, and 8 institutes for secondary and higher vocational education. The common objective is to professionalise, promote and create cohesion between the various maintenance trainings. The cooperation between the education institutes and the Centre of Expertise Kenteq resulted in the founding of MEC as the one stop shop that directs the development of maintenance training at regional and national level. Two spearheads are:
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To develop an Excellent Maintenance Training Centre. Based on the Life Long Learning philosophy MEC creates learning concepts and learning content for maintenance learning programs.
- To develop and implement simulations with the objective of making education attractive.
MEC will lead the monitoring and evaluation activities (WP 6 quality assurance) and the “Dissemination Workpackage” in coordination with all partners. They will elaborate the Monitoring Plan and the Dissemination Plan and they will be in charge of the project’s integrated image.
MEC participates in various networks in the maintenance industry (business) and schools (vocational education). MEC is a part of the Dutch Institute of World Class Maintenance. DIWCM is a network organisation with participation of a large number of companies from the Process Industry (asset owners and asset providers): DOW, Sabic, Philip Morris, Philips Lighting, Shell, BP, Imtech, Cegelec, Gofely, Stork etc. These companies are also involved in designing of the curricula for regular vocational education.