When the European Union's (EU's) Medical Device Regulation (MDR) was first introduced in 2017, it set in motion a three-year countdown to its full application in 2020. The MDR could drastically impact the way medical devices are made in the EU, particularly those produced using additive manufacturing (AM).

The product lifecycle of a technical system is often longer in practise than the availability of spare parts. Every day, manufacturers worldwide are discontinuing products, so their end of life is announced. This affects not only the systems manufacturer but largely the operator of the plant. The machine down risk for a defective component within the system increases. While it was common practise a few years ago to stock critical components, it was soon removed in respect of warehouse costs and the tied-up capital and replaced by just-in-time inventory availability by the manufactures or distributors.

 I would like to take you on an excursion into the world of numbers and statistics. Statistically, many companies spend 6 -10% of their gross fixed assets on annual maintenance.  If we take the indirect costs of machine failures, delivery shortfalls, quality problems and short-term replacement investments into account, we talk about a value of 750 billion euros per year.

Like most companies, the story of Radwell International is one of humble beginnings. The company story began 38 years ago in Mount Laurel, NJ and has survived and thrived through many changes. Brian Radwell, too, has gone through his share of challenges, both personal and professional. To read the detailed story of Radwell, you can check out this blog post The Story of Radwell.

To truly understand the Radwell story, you have to understand a little bit about Brian Radwell's motivation, which stems from supporting his father who was the kindest man in the world according to many people within the company who knew him when he was alive. I had the rare opportunity to ask Brian Radwell a question about fear of failure and the family culture of giving back .

More than £300,000 has been invested in Radwell Europe’s facility after significant growth in 2015 due to the increase of employees and test capabilities.

What do we do at Radwell International and how did the company evolve?

Brian Radwell, President and CEO explains it like this: "Radwell International, Inc. sells and repairs industrial electrical and electronic control devices. We sell and repair timers, counters, photoelectric sensors, circuit breakers, pushbuttons, PLC's, motors, speed control and any other devices used to make machinery run." Specifically, Mr. Radwell says that Radwell services automakers, chemical plants, food processing facilities, municipalities, government agencies, bakeries, power plants, amusement parks, exporters, plastic molding and extruders, steel plants and a long list of other business sectors.
Radwell's division, PLCCenter.com is the industrial electrical and electronic control equipment largest provider of new and used surplus,in the world. "We buy back new and used controls from plant closings, auctions and inventory overstock. We certify the parts, and then we ship them in custom PLCCenter packaging and sell them for half of their original price. We sell 30% of our products outside the US," said Radwell.

It’s been 51 years since the birth of the Programmable Logic Controller. We look back at the history of thePLCand how replacing hard wired relay systems changed theworld of manufacturing.

There are a lot of companies out there that offer surplus liquidation services. When hiring a surplus inventory liquidation service, there are five questions to ask and have answered before moving forward with the transaction.