When asked what comes to mind when someone mentions ‘Italy’, people often think of the country’s delicious pasta and food, fast cars, breath-taking landscapes and stunning architecture. Italy is certainly known for these remarkable things and much more. It is also home to this month’s supplier profile ReeR, a 60-year old company founded in Turin as a distributor of components for industrial and home automation.
Soon after its founding in 1959, ReeR expanded into manufacturing optoelectronic safety sensors, then added many other safety-related products to its offerings throughout the years. The company is now one of the largest manufacturers of safety sensors in Italy and a major supplier of those throughout the world. Its initial emphasis on safety, automation and high-quality products continues today.
“We have a long history in the field of safety and automation,” said Simone Scaravelli, Managing Director. “We are proud of our commitment to manufacture high-quality safety devices with the same passion we have had for the past 60 years. Our products are 100 percent made in Italy. From engineering to product development materials to manufacturing to testing, we do them all in Italy.”
ReeR remains headquartered in Turin, along with other corporations like FCA – the Italian subsidiary of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, coffee maker Lavazza, beverage companies Martini & Rossi and Cinzano, and personal computing pioneer Olivetti. Turin in the Piemonte Region of Italy was named “Best in Travel 2019” by Lonely Planet and hosted the 2006 Winter Olympic Games.
Safety Products Protect Equipment and People
ReeR manufactures and sells a wide range of safety light curtains, safety controllers, safety photocells, safety interfaces, and measurement light curtains to customers throughout the world. It also manufactures and sells a variety of light sources and lighting fixtures.
The company’s safety products are used in industrial settings to protect both equipment and people from harm. One way this is accomplished is with its safety light curtains that protect people near moving machinery such as presses, winders and palletizers in manufacturing facilities. The programmable safety light curtain offers integrated muting functions for use on pallets in warehouses.
AutomationDirect sells a variety of ReeR safety controllers. These products are used to monitor and protect equipment in many applications and environments. For example, the expandable and cost effective ReeR MOSAIC safety controllers use monitoring logic, overvoltage/short-circuit protection, redundant relays and positive-guided contacts to provide a high level of fail-safe operation for industrial operations that require protection. The MOSAIC communications modules add Ethernet/IP or Modbus TCP/IP communications capabilities to the MOSAIC modular safety controller for diagnostics and data transmission needs.
ReeR safety products are typically used to protect machinery in food and beverage, robotics, metalworking, ceramics, automotive and textile applications. These products are also used in CNC centers where computers control the machine tools in industries including wood, glass, stone and marble working. Of course, ReeR products can be found just about wherever machine protection is needed!
A Quality Work Environment Means Quality Products and a Clean Environment
ReeR is owned by the Scaravelli family which purchased the company in 1990. Soon after that purchase, ReeR began to focus its core business toward manufacturing safety devices. Today, the company has 170 employees, including 20 who work in Research and Development, and 12 in Quality Control. ReeR also has a direct sales network in Italy, China, Brazil and Korea and more than 65 distributors throughout the world, including AutomationDirect in the United States.
ReeR is proud of its employees and their commitment to safety and quality. It’s also proud of the work environment it offers.
“Environmental and workplace health and safety management is an absolute priority for us,” said Scaravelli. “We believe that the quality of the work environment also means quality of products and services for our customers. Our employees manufacture more than 85,000 light curtains pairs and more than 100,000 safety modules each year, assemble more than 3,000 electronic boards every day and mount more than 100 million components each year. They continuously focus on making high-quality products that protect their customers’ equipment and people.”
He noted that the company recently launched its ‘Your future’s safe!’ marketing campaign to highlight its commitment to help customers safeguard equipment and employees. ReeR also actively participates in several Italian, European and International (IEC) Standard Committees on machine safety to stay informed and up-to-date with changes and guidelines that may improve their products.
“We are very active in industry and standards organizations,” said Scaravelli. “This participation helps ensure that we are always on the forefront of product standard compliance, which is important to us and to our customers.”
Complementing its focus on quality, ReeR focuses on the health of the environment. It uses advanced technologies in its plants to save resources and reduce air, soil and water pollution and constantly monitors activities to ensure maximum system efficiency. ReeR sources all of its internal electrical need from renewable sources, regularly innovates its manufacturing process and invests in manufacturing technologies to continuously improve processes and products. This helps the company manage parts effectively and reduce waste. The company also employs Lean Manufacturing methodology for mass production that minimizes waste while it organizes all tasks smoothly and without interruption. This allows production activity to be entirely driven by customer demand.
A Winning Financial Performance and a Growing Future
ReeR maintains a sharp eye on its financial performance and doubled its revenue in the past five years. The company has received several prizes for its consistently strong performance and ranks among the Top 500 Italian small to mid-size companies. It was awarded the “Excellent Company 2017” award by Osservatorio PMI and the “Champions 2018” and “Champions 2019” award by Italy Post for financial performance.
This focus has paid off for customers in many ways, including by allowing ReeR to expand its presence in other countries around the globe. In the past three years, the company has opened ReeR China in 2016, ReeR do Brasil in 2018 and ReeR Korea in early 2019. Back in Italy, the company will begin a two-year
expansion of its manufacturing and office facilities in Turin. The expansion will double its manufacturing and logistic floorspace and add a new 1,000-square-meter office building near its existing one.
“Our new facilities will help us continue to grow and focus on the factors that have always been important to us and helped us serve our customers: making high quality safety products, continually looking for ways to improve them and expanding our ability to reach new markets,” said Scaravelli.
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With ReeR’s commitment to the core values it has practiced since its founding, its strong financial performance and its desire for targeted growth, the company is well-positioned to continue offering customers the products they need to protect machinery and people for the next 60 years.