Radwell International’s Blog

If you know anything about Radwell, it won’t come as a surprise that we planned our newest regional distribution center in East Arlington, Texas, around automation. After all, we work with our customers to make sure they have the equipment they need to keep their automation systems running, so we understand how valuable automation is to business success.

Plus, we had already successfully automated our New Jersey distribution center. That project met all of our expectations by improving inventory management, making more effective use of our warehouse space and cutting picking times dramatically. Based on that success, we didn’t have to spend time evaluating and selecting an automation system and integration partner. We knew we would design the Texas facility around the AutoStore system and work with Swisslog as our partner. We also had the benefit of our experience and learnings from the earlier project.

It is often during times of crisis in a manufacturing facility that Radwell International is called upon to deliver a solution. Our technicians have spent years honing their skills for exactly the type of situation that occurred with one of our customers this summer.

We received a call at Radwell from one of the manufacturing plants for a large global food manufacturing company. They had called in for an after-hours rush and discovered that Radwell also offered field services which they desperately needed. They were in crisis: their plant was not operational. This was caused by a power surge from one of the utility sub stations, resulting in over 100 drives and other controls and protection devices failing or blowing up due to excessive voltage. This was a major equipment failure situation.

Jet Wastewater Treatment Solutions manufactures package plants for locations across the globe. They design systems that are easy to use and maintain as they are found in every possible location from U.S. housing developments to African villages.

In 1955 Jet made the country’s first residential aerated wastewater treatment systems. The company’s BAT (biologically accelerated treatment) media can nitrify more quickly than much larger waste activated sludge plants. Its small systems are not only inexpensive to build; they are also very inexpensive to operate, as they require less maintenance than competing systems.

Engineers play a critical role in integrating legacy systems into the digital landscape of today’s businesses. The new-age enterprises thrive on technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Big Data and analytics, and robotic process automation (RPA). To optimize these technologies, organizations need to either overhaul their operations completely or make use of the existing setup and intelligently transform them as per the business needs. This makes strategizing a very important gamut of the digital transformation exercise.

A complete overhaul is not only cost-intensive but also risks compromising business continuity. As a result, organizations generally opt for the latter option and gradually transition legacy systems while keeping a close look at the lifecycle.

It’s important to choose the right valve in a hydronic system for hydronic flow optimization and there are a variety of reasons why this is true. For starters, Hydronic systems are highly interdependent systems. Each system component will interact with one another and impact performance. Valves are the critical devices that control heat transfer in hydronic systems.

Proper valve sizing and selection involves looking at the complete system. Valves not sized and selected correctly lead to undesirable outcomes not only at the heart transfer device but also the overall mechanical system.

Obsolescence is an unavoidable part of any manufacturing endeavor. No matter how well your company has planned, some factors are more challenging to consider in advance than others.

In the era of Industry 4.0, new technology continues to revolutionize the manufacturing industry. Industry professionals view it as the latest industrial revolution, hence the Industry 4.0 moniker. Big data and computing technologies are the front-runners in innovations proving value to manufacturers. It is more crucial now than ever to remain on the leading edge of new technology. Upgrading equipment to provide greater efficiencies will provide a greater return on the investment.

If you are responsible for managing your plant’s electrical power system and maintenance plan, there are four predictive maintenance tests that should be incorporated into an overall maintenance program. These tests can reduce the need for offline services, improve system performance, reduce the risk of system failure and help optimize budgeted expenditures.

These predictive maintenance tests can be performed while system are online. They are non-destructive, non-invasive and examine electrical equipment under normal operating conditions. Ideally, you should coordinate these tests between planned outages so the resulting data can be used to inform and help prioritize offline service needs.

Every piece of industrial automation will have schematics (we hope!) These drawings communicate design intent from the engineer to the assembler, troubleshooter and person doing maintenance. With pages showing power distribution, input/output (I/O), and safety circuits, a well-organized print set can be invaluable for the life of the equipment. Knowing how important these are, it’s surprising how few resources are available for a professional to learn how to create schematics.

Many times, the choice of valve type – ball, butterfly, gate, angle seat, or solenoid – rests on installed base or tradition. For example, a water treatment facility tends to use butterfly and gate valves for cost effective throughput. Some applications fall into a gray area where multiple valve types could fulfill the application’s requirements. In these cases, there is not always a right answer or a clear preference for industrial process valve selection.

Below are five tips and tricks to help determine which process valve is most suitable based on a variety of parameters. The comparison between valve types is intended to be a guideline for most general-purpose applications and may not apply to more unique or extreme conditions.

Few other industrial environments can match the diverse and difficult operating conditions found across the food and beverage processing industries, which can have an adverse impact on the machinery used on the factory floor and also on overall productivity.

With rising energy and labor costs, there is a need to optimize equipment reliability and to maximize uptimes so many operations are looking to maximize equipment output by extending the mean-time-between-failure and solving challenging application problems.

Reactive maintenance can be up to four times more expensive than planned maintenance, so many operations have moved to preventative maintenance strategies. Instead of carrying out repairs following a failure, regular checks and interventions are scheduled.