Service and Life Cycle Management of engineered assets/goods

This article provides an introduction to the special issue dedicated to Service and Life Cycle Management of engineered assets/ goods. Managing engineered assets and goods requires integrative organizational practices to ensure low life cycle costs, high reliability and availability, at maximum safety levels. These integrative practices have always been at the forefront of the research of guest editor dr. Warse Klingenberg. Warse Klingenberg, who was an associate professor of Industrial Engineering, passed away in December 2013. We dedicate the introduction to this special issue to him. We start off with a short in memoriam. Thereafter, we share the vision of dr. Klingenberg on this field which also formed the inspiration for this special issue. Warse Klingenberg, who received his PhD in mechanical engineering, has been active in consulting and conducting research at major engineering and maintenance contractors. The questions driving his professional activities have always been structured around the process improvement of firms engineering, producing and servicing/maintaining engineered assets/goods. In doing so he always had an open eye for questions that were both theoretically and practically grounded. This was underlined by the fact that he received many Dutch research grants for projects driven by industrial reality, targeted towards improved theoretical understanding. Warse established a clear line of thought in terms of teaching as well. The Master course Asset management he developed with colleagues from the University of Groningen now serves as a basis for teaching young professionals the essentials of Service and Lifecycle Management of engineered goods/assets. Warse delighted his colleagues, and his PhD students in particular, with his pragmatic and practical view on researching and teaching asset management. We are very sad to see that his life ended too soon.