Why I am passionate.

Today, I know that my career in maintenance had essentially been decided long before I even knew what the term “maintenance” meant. It all began in a small garage somewhere in East Germany — not in an industrial plant. I was fourteen years old when my neighbor asked whether I wanted to help him repair old VW Beetles. For the first time, I found myself surrounded by oil-smeared tools and the smell of gasoline, metal and paint. My neighbor loved old Beetles — and he had the wonderful ability to turn hopeless heaps of scrap back into roadworthy cars. For me, it was a completely new world. In the East of Germany, a VW Beetle had something almost magical about it. You have to understand: in the East there were no spare parts for Western cars — at least not officially. If something broke, you couldn’t simply order and replace it. So we improvised. Parts were fabricated, adapted, swapped, or replaced with incredible creativity. Throwing things away wasn’t an option. Everything might be useful again someday. Looking back, that was probably my first lesson in sustainability and creative problem solving — even though at the time I was simply thrilled to take an engine apart.

At some point, when I was eighteen years old, I bought my own VW Beetle — completely run-down. A 1950 model with a split window — undrivable, of course. It wasn’t a rational decision. But I loved that car. Maybe because I could turn something that seemed worthless into something special again. Today, I believe that was the first time I truly understood what maintenance is really about: not just technology, but respect for technical things, creativity, and the joy of bringing something back to life — or keeping it alive.

Later, that passion became a profession — first as a machine and plant fitter, then as a service technician. After that came university studies, research, and finally my entry into the world of industrial maintenance, software and consulting business. Oily hands eventually turned into clean Powerpoint presentations. The old toolbox got replaced by a set of KPIs; repair lists became a reliability strategy; a CMMS installation became a global transformation program. But honestly, at the core nothing ever changed. It was always about understanding why something doesn’t work — and how to fix it and to make it work better.

What still fascinates me about industrial maintenance is its enormous industrial importance — an importance that is often very much underestimated. Many people think maintenance is simply “repairing.” In reality, it determines whether refineries produce, chemical plants operate safely, power stations remain available, or billion-dollar investments actually deliver their value. When assets are down, maintenance suddenly becomes a board-level issue. Then it’s no longer about bolts and spare parts — it’s about supply chains, profits, competitiveness, and sometimes even the future of entire sites. That is exactly what has always fulfilled me professionally. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to help companies improve over decades — not in theory, but very concretely. When a plant ran more stably and safely, production losses were prevented, people had to spend less time in constant firefighting, and a site became successful again — that’s when I felt why I love industrial maintenance.

Maybe that’s also why I stayed loyal to maintenance throughout my entire professional life — even though I would have had many opportunities to move into other management areas. Supply chain, strategy, operations, capital investement management — all of that would have been possible. But maintenance always had something incredibly honest about it for me. You see immediately whether something works or not. And when you solve real problems together with people, it creates something deeply satisfying.

Looking back, it sometimes surprises even me that the boy from a small, insignificant garage in the East became an international consultant for asset management. None of it was ever planned. But each step somehow built on the one before. And perhaps that is exactly what’s beautiful about it: my working life didn’t follow a career plan. It was more like a very long "repair"-story — only eventually it wasn’t about VW Beetles anymore, but about companies in the process industries.