On Tuesday the first day of the show, the WNE Awards reward the most innovative nuclear companies in four categories:
Products & Services innovation
Nuclear Safety innovation
Skills & Knowledge Management innovation
Operational Excellence innovation
With one prize for large groups and one prize for SMEs in each category and a jury composed of top worldwide experts, WNE makes every effort to recognize the best talents of the nuclear field.
Innovation in Product & Service
Patrick LANDAIS
CEA
Innovation in Operational Excellence
Maria KORSNICK
Nuclear Energy Institute
Innovation in Skills & Knowledge Management
Fiona RAYMENT
Nuclear Skills Strategy Group
Innovation in Nuclear Safety
(to be confirmed)
SMEs Category
What has been the impact of your participation in the Awards?
"Receiving the WNE Operational Excellence award (SME category) was an unexpected and encouraging impulse to improve internally and extend our activity following the same internal methodology that deserved the recognition. Many companies heard about us for the first time thanks to the award and that has allowed us to establish business with new suppliers and customers, extend our geographical presence and as a consequence of all that, grow."
Have you noticed any internal changes in your company following your participation?
"Many! The mindset of the staff (no mater if outside the quality or production depts.) has become even more committed to the “festina lente” method, that is to say, to make things in the right way since the beginning preparing the works to the minimum detail prior to execution.
At the same time, the structure has been adapted to growth and we have physically split the nuclear and the O&G divisions."
What is the business benefit of your participation in the WNE Awards 2018?
"Difficult to calculate. But anyway, the fact is that once we became better known in the market due to the award, we have increased not only our sales and backlog, but also the net of partners, either as suppliers or as customers, with whom we are currently developing new applications of the weld overlay and other welding technologies."
Newtesol
Vila Manuel - CEO
SMEs Category
What has been the impact of your participation in the Awards?
"Our pharmaceutical laboratory entered the world of the nuclear industry as part of the WNE 2018 with the presentation of the CEVIDRA cream to treat radionuclide contamination.
We applied for Nuclear Safety because we felt that our CEVIDRA cream was a real breakthrough in the management of contamination. Receiving the Award immediately allowed us to meet nuclear manufacturers. We received our first orders during the show and also met with partners who wanted to distribute and promote our product in Europe and abroad."
Have you noticed any internal changes in your company following your participation?
"It is always difficult to develop and market a new pharmaceutical product (in this case a medical device) in a niche market because the number of patients is limited and the number of experts are few in number. It was also impossible to conduct pre-market clinical trials on healthy volunteers as is done in the pharmaceutical industry. Our notoriety allowed us to start processing CEVIDRA cream in the INBs a few days after the WNE and to have almost immediately the first results of the decontamination on the employees. We have thus validated the effectiveness of the "in-vivo" treatment and have built our development on these results."
What is the business benefit of your participation at the WNE Awards 2018?
"Our Award has given us a reputation among the public and the media with articles in business newspapers such as Les Echos in France or Nikkei Business Daily in Japan. The award was presented to us by representatives of power plant operators from around the world and has made us a benchmark in the nuclear industry. We are now working with nuclear power plant operators, fuel producers and first-tier subcontractors. We have also developed an activity with the armed forces in the development of countermeasures to manage the risks of nuclear and radiological contamination"
Are you planning to participate in the 2020 Awards?
"We have new products in development but we are not sure we are ready for June 2020. We will be there if we can present the results of our research."
DESTAING Stephane
CEVIDRA Laboratory - Chairman
Big group Mid-cap Category
What has been the impact of your participation in the Awards?
"The award given by WNE to ABB for operational excellence concerned Asset Suite (as a product used by more than half of the world's reactors), ABB (a leading company on the energy market) and above all the largest project ever carried out in the world (the implementation of ABB Enterprise Asset Management solutions for EDF's French nuclear and conventional power generation). Project that successfully ended at the end of 2017, only a few months before the WNE 2018. It was therefore natural to associate EDF with this Award, which we did when we signed a collaboration agreement (MOU) with EDF during the WNE."
Have you noticed any internal changes in your company following your participation?
"First a surprise, then a satisfaction since this award rewards more than 30 years of effort to meet the needs of our nuclear customers. All our teams are therefore associated with it."
What is the business benefit of your participation at the WNE Awards 2018?
"An additional element of differentiation on the market, which has allowed us to get closer to ROSATOM, the winner of the 2016 WNE Operational Excellence Award"
Are you planning to participate in the 2020 Awards?
"Yes, most likely. The WNE Awards provide an opportunity to highlight ABB's know-how and potentially to make itself known in specific areas related to nuclear energy."
CANNAUD Florence
ABB - Marketing Communication manager
