User:Brian Radwell

Brian Radwell is President and CEO of Radwell International based in Lumberton N.J. The company distributes surplus overstock and factory direct controls such as programmable logic controllers (PLC's) to an international customer base and performs industrial repairs domestically. The market served here is known as MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations).

MRO encompasses repairing any type of electrical or mechanical device or providing supplies that preserve or support a factory's assets (a.k.a., asset recovery). These activities also involve preventive maintenance critical to manufactuers avoiding costly downtime. There are as many types of devices used in automation as there are malfunctions, making Quality Assurance critical to PLC repair as well as all other controls in a manufacturing setting.

Aging equipment in a factory includes: temperature controls; servo motors; dc motors; circuit breakers; power supplies and many other device types. Surplus overstock can be liquidated for re-distribution where the parts for industry are needed in a manufacturing setting, and the parts are no longer supported by the manufacturer. A large supplier in the industrial surplus business may stock up 1 million Stock Keeping Units (SKU) or more in inventory. Industrial Repair can also be an economical alternative to a factory-new replacement, especially when the cost of servicing the unit is below 45 percent of the new cost.

Companies such as Honeywell, ABB Ltd., Omron Automation, Siemens Automation, General Electric, Allen Bradley and Mitsubishi Electric are ubiquitous in plant automation settings and end users attempt to preserve these assets through repair or surplus overstock purchases.