Willian Santos of ABI Electronics and RepairDontWaste.com recently had the pleasure of being a special guest on the UK’s top manufacturing-focused podcast and had the opportunity to speak about the evolution of the ‘Repair, Don’t Waste’ movement and the successes it has made so far.
The highly influential Great British Manufacturing podcast is run by MTD MFG and Jefferson Group, a successful marketing specialist and media outlet covering multiple sectors of the UK engineering and manufacturing industry. MTD MFG launched in early 2019 with the aim of becoming the number one resource for manufacturing news in the UK – we at ‘Repair Don’t Waste’ think they have absolutely achieved that goal.
ABI’s International Sales Manager, Willian Santos, gave an insightful interview this month and highlighted not only new individual success stories of ‘Repair Heroes’ from around the world but the continued rapid growth of the ‘Repair, Don’t Waste’ movement. Regarding the vital need to establish a repair-first in industrial manufacturing, he said
“If something breaks down, let’s develop the capabilities to test and repair rather than replace, not just for the money but to increase product reliability and machine uptime by understanding what is failing.”
– Willian Santos, International Sales Manager ABI Electronics
A repair-first approach of electronic and automation equipment does not only provide one benefit, for example temporary financial gratification, but is crucial for the future understanding of essential machinery used regularly by companies and allows engineers to know immediately what to do when the circuit boards controlling the machine fail.
Excitingly, Willian tells us of the Latin American auto–parts manufacturer Rassini. Rassini decided to bring the ‘Repair, Don’t Waste’ ethos into their operations and has recently invested in ABI’s universal circuit board troubleshooting system BoardMaster and specialist training. Rassini is a company in high demand – they manufacture around 14 million brake discs per year and is an official supplier of General Motors. The circuit boards used in over 250 FANUC robotic equipment and Siemens CNC machines such as those found in servo drives, frequency inverters, controllers, and variable speed drives are no longer being replaced. In fact, the in-house electronic support team is currently repairing and reusing 600 circuit boards per year. Not only has Rassini increased productivity as well as their independence from their machine suppliers, but the in-house repair operation is expected to save 2.5 million US dollars per annum in the process – by not having to buy circuit boards that could reach several thousand dollars each.
Willian also talks about another huge success story – GE Renewable – who up until 4 years ago were not repairing the faulty circuit boards in wind turbines operated by the business. From initial contact with the Brazilian branch of GE, Willian spoke about GE’s outstanding decision to create 7 worldwide repair labs furnished with specialist equipment from ABI such as the BoardMaster and RevEng, and have saved an impressive 4 million dollars in the process.
Willian’s interview also covered how ABI and the #RepairDontWaste hashtag have held a growing presence online since 2014, surpassing 3,000 references on Google. To increase the reach for ABI and our movement, Willian talked about taking inspiration from other industries. One of these insights led the team to develop the industry-first ‘ABI Labs’ video series. ‘ABI Labs’ is an innovative concept in the engineering industry and offers introductions and troubleshooting guides for the specialist Test and Repair equipment that ABI provides all over the world.
By constantly engaging with his audience, and with a helpful boost of an incredibly successful article featured in Interesting Engineering, Willian and the ABI marketing team launched their flagship website RepairDontWaste.com in February 2022 to support the transition from the current Make-Break-Waste model, an exciting prospect that requires a change in education, and society’s attitude towards repair. As Willian states,
“I am a big advocate of repair being taught as a principle from early education.”
– Willian Santos, International Sales Manager ABI Electronics
We at the ‘Repair Don’t Waste’ movement are passionate about the work we do and the impact it has in educating and inspiring an army of Repair Heroes across diverse industries ensuring that electronic repairs, as featured in the examples above, are effective and up to standard. By creating resources and case studies that are easily accessible, and by advertising our message as far and wide as possible, we aspire to shift the mindset of many individuals who may not even have considered repair as an option.
