Renishaw strong move into 3D printing

But UK based Renishaw entitles the topic “Additive Manufacturing”: they have appointed Clive Martell, former President and CEO of Delcam, to a new role entitled ‘Head of Global Additive Manufacturing’.

Clive Martell

Martell, aged 54, progressed from being a graduate recruit to become CEO of Delcam plc, where he successfully managed the company’s transition from an AIM (Alternative Investment Market) company to an operating division of Autodesk. After his appointment as Delcam’s CEO in 2009 his successful track record of delivering strong revenue and profit growth earned him the CEO of the Year Award at the 2013 Grant Thornton Quoted Company Awards, another qualification to add to those such as his MSc, CEng, and MIET.

In this new role at Renishaw, Clive will report to Geoff McFarland, Group Engineering Director and will be responsible for the strategy and direction of additive manufacturing across the Renishaw Group. He will liaise with development teams in the UK and sales and marketing operations across the world and will be particularly focussed on making a global success of Renishaw as an additive manufacturing (AM) solutions provider.

As part of this new role Clive will also guide the company’s Additive Manufacturing products line based in Staffordshire, UK, which develops new AM systems, and the Medical Dental products line, which delivers AM solutions for the healthcare sector. Commenting on the appointment, Geoff McFarland, said, “Having worked closely with Clive Martell during my six-year tenure as a non-executive director of Delcam, I am delighted to welcome him to Renishaw. His extensive experience within the global manufacturing industry, including the ability to grow customer service activities, the development of dedicated software solutions and the establishment of Delcam’s Healthcare division, will be especially valuable to Renishaw as we develop additive manufacturing as a standard solution for production and medical applications.”

Renishaw background

Renishaw is a world leading engineering technologies company, supplying products used for applications as diverse as jet engine and wind turbine manufacture, through to dentistry and brain surgery. It has over 4,000 employees located in the 32 countries with wholly owned subsidiary operations. Sales for the year ended June 2014 were £355.5 million – of which 93% was exported. Yes, that’s 93%! The company’s largest markets are the USA, China, Germany and Japan.

Throughout its history Renishaw has made a significant commitment to research and development, with historically between 14% and 18% of annual sales invested in R&D and engineering. The majority of this R&D and manufacturing of the company’s products is carried out in the UK, where due to strong growth it currently has over 100 vacancies.

The company’s success has been recognised with numerous international awards, including eighteen Queen’s Awards recognising achievements in technology, export and innovation.

Do you remember the Science Museum exhibit of 3D printed components in a metal, maybe aluminium, as reported in the INSIDER some three/four years ago? Or maybe you visited the Museum and saw it? I think the item on display was part of a carburetor. But what is making Clive Martell look so pleased? It’s either the job, or the component in his hands, which looks like a filter element? I will try to find out, but you can guess? See the pic below.

So the answer is, that this is just an example part, produced to highlight the skill and various different capabilities of additive manufacturing. It includes a fine mesh, a conformal cooling channel and a blade structure visible on the outside. They chose to make this piece out of cobalt chrome: any other metal alloy can be used used in additive manufacturing.

Alfa Laval acquires niche company…?

The press announcement is fairly bland, but is presumably required by the stock market requirements as the Group has acquired an independent company. But the interesting part is that the company is not named, and the geographic location is not given. The statement says:

“Alfa Laval Group – a world leader in heat transfer, centrifugal separation and fluid handling – has acquired an aftermarket company, specialized in separation technology. The company will remain a separate organization and offer its own parts and services under its own brand name. Revenues are estimated to reach about SEK 50 million this year and the company is consolidated as from July 3, 2015.

“The acquisition is in line with the strategy of the Alfa Laval Group of acquiring companies that complement the existing business in terms of products, geography or in the form of new sales channels. In this case the Alfa Laval Group adds a complementary aftermarket channel.”

Lars Renström, President and CEO, added: “With the acquisitions we are adding presence in an important niche of the aftermarket”. Possibly the plural of ‘acquisitions’ refers to other previous acquisitions, such as in South Korea. At SEK50m in forecast sales, the company is small, as this is only about USD6m sales in a year. But Alfa Laval add another interesting aside, stressing the value of the aftermarket sector, which was: “Did you know that… the value of the aftermarket for separation is estimated to be four times the value of new sales?”

Recruiting Design Engineers

For those working in HR and recruitment, this is how Sellafield Ltd, the company cleaning up the Sellafield (previously known as Windscale) nuclear plant site in the north-west of the UK, advertises to recruit good engineers wanting a challenge. The site is also located on the coast of the Lake District, one of the most beautiful national park locations in the UK. Their advert, under the picture shown above, of the relevant chimney, reads:

“This is a first generation reprocessing plant. Constructed during the late 1940s and early 1950s, high-hazard reduction protocols weren’t factored into its creation. The plant contains four highly active cells, each containing redundant radioactive material. Before we can even begin to think about how we can demolish this building, we need to work out how we can safely remove the 61m stack that’s housed on the roof. And we can’t begin to do that until a new ventilation plant has been completed. If that wasn’t complicated enough, the building is located in a highly congested part of our site and space is extremely limited. Getting this right couldn’t be more important – the positive impact will affect the lives of millions across the UK for generations. There’s absolutely zero margin for error. Welcome a 100-year transformation project. Welcome to design engineering at Sellafield Ltd.”

E+H in Finland

In the future Endress+Hauser Oy will be the exclusive provider of Endress+Hauser field devices and related solutions and services in the Finnish market. The new company started operations as of 1 July 2015 and will resume all the previous business responsibilities of the Metso Endress+Hauser joint venture company, which include maintaining the longstanding customer relationships with companies in the Finnish process industries.

Along with these changes the company will further concentrate on its core competences according to the E+H corporate strategy. Endress+Hauser already serves customers in six locations in Finland, and the plan is to further expand and develop local expertise around the country. This will be achieved by effectively utilizing the parent company’s global operating models, broad industrial knowledge and efficient logistics.

Benefiting from local expertise and the global parent company’s operating model

“By combining our parent company’s efficient operating models and high-quality products, with our existing local expertise and knowledge, we can be a truly reliable and competitive partner for our customers,” Tuomo Saukkonen, Managing Director of Endress+Hauser Oy, said. “Additionally we see that Endress+Hauser’s highly developed Plant Asset Management offering will serve as a basis for our operations, enabling cost-efficient field device management and e-commerce.”

Endress+Hauser has successfully grown its business worldwide and now wants to place further emphasis on better serving Finnish industries. The new company aims to further increase market share in Finland by bringing out new products, services and solutions to address the needs of process industries.

Background from the INSIDER Newsletter

The February Industrial Automation INSIDER Newsletter reported on the E+H 2014 results and their business plans as follows:

Endress+Hauser Group results for 2014 showed a net sales increase of 11%, to a total just over Euro2Bn ($2.3Bn). These figures consolidated those for Analytik Jena and Kaiser Optical Systems for the first time – the organic growth in net sales was just under 6%. Operating profit and net income also improved compared to the previous year, and despite problems with the value of the Rouble affecting the results at Analytik Jena, other developments in foreign exchange rates created a slight tailwind, in contrast to the year before. CFO Luc Schultheiss commented that the current strength of the Swiss Franc does pose some challenges, for the Swiss manufacturing operation, but most production is based in the Eurozone or US Dollar areas.

In Finland, the joint venture sales and service company run in co-operation with Metso is to revert to Metso ownership: E+H will establish their own exclusive representation in Finland, through a wholly owned subsidiary. A similar JV arrangement in Switzerland will be transferred to become wholly owned by E+H.