RS Group plc

RS offers an extensive selection of smart products optimized to support predictive maintenance strategies and improve mechanical power system reliability and performance — all backed by expertise you can trust. 

FORT WORTH, Texas, Feb. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- RS, a high-service global product and service solutions provider for industrial customers, offers the products and expertise you need to improve the reliability of your mechanical power systems.  

Mechanical power systems are the backbone of industrial operations, driving everything from conveyor belts and gearboxes to HVAC systems and process manufacturing equipment. So, failures tend to cause a ripple effect, driving the average cost of unplanned downtime to a staggering $260,000 per hour and resulting in lost production, missed delivery deadlines, and reputational damage.

Employing predictive maintenance (PdM) strategies and solutions — like smart technologies designed to leverage IIoT sensors, machine learning, AI, and data analytics — can help improve mechanical power system reliability and performance. The roughly 41% of industrial manufacturers who already employ predictive analytics report experiencing significant benefits, including:

• A 30–50% reduction in unplanned downtime
• 12% fewer scheduled repairs when using IIoT-enabled maintenance
• Extended equipment lifetimes
• Improved reliability for high-load applications

Predictive maintenance can also help manufacturers cut their operating costs by 25–30% and have a positive impact on personnel — 67% of whom report feeling overwhelmed by urgent repair demands and 59% of whom report that their maintenance teams feel understaffed, which can further compound persistent skilled labor shortages.

Smart automation and control solutions for mechanical systems

Mechanical power systems rely on several key components, including gearmotors, gearboxes, motors, bearings, couplings, belts, and belt drives, to keep industrial processes moving. Selecting quality components and combining them with smart automation and control technologies, such as soft starters, vibration sensors, and alignment tools, is a sure-fire way to reduce mechanical stress, optimize energy usage, prevent equipment failures, and maximize uptime in demanding industrial applications, including discrete and process manufacturing, material handling and packaging, and HVAC systems.

Gearmotors are essential for reliable power transmission, especially in environments where contamination, moisture, and harsh washdown conditions can compromise performance. Models with advanced washdown protection address these challenges by preventing contamination, reducing corrosion risk, and maintaining lubrication integrity and are especially well-suited for food, beverage, and chemical processing applications with rigorous hygiene and uptime requirements.

Bison 261 Series SANIMotor gearmotors are manufactured in the United States and engineered for durability and sanitation compliance in harsh environments. They feature an IP69K-rated stainless steel shell, EPDM O-rings, and triple-lip shaft seals to prevent water and contaminant ingress, food-grade H1 grease for lifetime lubrication and maintenance-free operation, and modular gear trains with sealed ball bearings and inverter-duty AC motors for rugged reliability. Ideal applications include conveyors, mixers, and pumps in food and beverage processing facilities.

Belts are a cornerstone of industrial power transmission, but they're also a common failure point. High-performance belts, like synchronous belts and V-belts, help eliminate lubrication requirements, reduce contamination risks, and improve efficiency compared to roller chains. They also offer cleaner operation, quieter performance, and higher efficiency with significantly lower maintenance demands, resulting in long-term savings and operational stability.

Gates Poly Chain GT Carbon synchronous belts feature a durable polyurethane construction with patented carbon fiber tensile cords and exhibit outstanding horsepower capacity, flexibility, and resistance to chemicals, oil, abrasion, and elongation. They also reliably withstand extreme temperatures spanning -54°C to +85°C (-65°F to +185°F) and provide high power density for demanding applications, like conveyors and pumps.

Vibration sensors help monitor the health of rotating industrial equipment — including motors, pumps, fans, gearboxes, and bearings — by converting mechanical movement into electrical signals that can be analyzed to identify early signs of imbalance, misalignment, or wear. Smart vibration sensors integrate wireless connectivity, advanced analytics, and IIoT communication protocols to provide maintenance teams with actionable data. This enables remote diagnostics, trend analysis, and automated alerts and makes it easier to prioritize repairs and optimize maintenance schedules.

SKF's Axios wireless sensors and QuickCollect handheld tools help simplify predictive maintenance in mission-critical manufacturing, energy, and automotive applications. SKF Axios sensors continuously monitor vibration and temperature and wirelessly transmit data to cloud-based analytics platforms to provide users with real-time insights that enable early fault detection. QuickCollect tools offer flexible, route-based data collection that makes it easy for maintenance teams to capture and analyze machine health during routine inspections. Together, they help detect common failure modes, such as misalignment and lubrication issues, before they escalate, enabling root cause analysis and reducing downtime by up to 35%.

Soft starters play a critical role in protecting industrial motors and mechanical drivetrains from the stress of across-the-line starts, which can create torque shock, trip breakers, damage belts, couplings, and gearboxes, and even cause voltage dips across facilities. They gradually ramp up supply voltage to ensure that motors smoothly accelerate to full speed, which reduces mechanical wear and maintenance requirements, improves process stability, extends equipment lifetimes, and minimizes downtime. Ideal applications include pumps, conveyors, and high-inertia loads, like blowers, to avoid costly peak power usage.

Eaton's S811+/S801+ soft starter series delivers advanced motor protection in a compact design that's easy to retrofit into existing motor control centers or enclosures. It smoothly starts and stops three-phase motors extending from fractional horsepower up to 1,000 amps and features built-in overload protection and a run bypass contactor to simplify installation and improve efficiency.

Optimize your mechanical power systems with smart solutions from RS

These and other smart maintenance products proven to help industrial customers maximize equipment uptime, efficiency, reliability, and durability and protect critical assets, like mechanical power systems, are readily available at RS.

For more information about smart mechanical power transmission and motor control solutions from RS — including Bison gearmotors, Gates synchronous belts, SKF  vibration sensors, Eaton soft starters, and proven, economical, industrial-grade RS PRO products — visit the links embedded here. For more information about industrial power reliability and predictive maintenance, check out the new "Improving mechanical power reliability with smart solutions" article by RS Category Manager Will Morris and other relevant RS Expert Advice content,

For assistance identifying, procuring, deploying, and maintaining mechanical power reliability solutions, contact your local RS representative at 1.866.433.5722 or reach out to

the RS technical support team.

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RS Mechanical Power Reliability PR.jpg

About RS

RS is a high-service global product and service solutions provider for industrial customers, enabling them to operate efficiently and sustainably. We operate in 36 markets, stock over 830,000 industrial and specialist products, and list an additional five million relevant for our industrial customers, sourced from over 2,500 suppliers. This extensive range supports our customers across the industrial lifecycle of designing, building, and maintaining equipment and operations. We enhance their experience through a tailored service model, leveraging our efficient physical, digital, and process infrastructure sustainably. We combine a technically led and digitally enabled approach with an exceptional team of experts; ultimately, it's our people that make the difference. Our purpose, making amazing happen for a better world, reflects our focus on delivering results for people, planet, and profit. 

RS Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with stock ticker RS1, and in the year ended March 31, 2025, reported revenue of $3,381.64 million. For more information, please visit https://www.rsgroup.com/ or connect with us on LinkedIn or X (Twitter).

About RS in the Americas

In the Americas region, RS stocks more than 250,000 industrial and electronic products from more than 700 trusted suppliers. These solutions cover categories extending from automation and control equipment to interconnect, passive, active, and electromechanical components and include more than 90,000 high-quality, competitively priced RS PRO products. For more information, please visit https://us.rs-online.com or connect with us via social media on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Editorial Contact & Media Inquiries:

Erica Goode, RS Director of Marketing – U.S. and Canada

Erica.Goode@rsgroup.com  

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SOURCE RS

The RS PRO Total Panel Integration portfolio is a one-stop shop for industrial control panels, providing customers with exceptional convenience, superior reliability, and substantial cost savings.

FORT WORTH, Texas, Jan. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- RS, a high-service global product and service solutions provider for industrial customers, offers a comprehensive collection of RS PRO brand control panel products, extending from essential connectivity and control components to the tools and accessories needed for installation and maintenance.

Control panels are the cornerstone of modern industrial operations. They allow operators to centrally manage diverse collections of connected machinery, equipment, and devices as cohesive systems. They streamline and safeguard industrial processes, regulate electrical power distribution, contribute to standards compliance, convert simple inputs into complex automations that improve efficiency, reliability, and precision, and enable the real-time monitoring required for continuous process optimization.

The RS PRO Total Panel Integration portfolio is a one-stop shop for industrial control panels, providing customers with exceptional convenience, superior reliability, and substantial savings. Solutions include an extensive selection of essential control components for both in and on the panel, as well as structural, organizational, power, logic, and connectivity components, and relevant tools and accessories, including more than: 

• 130 DIN rails and DIN rail accessories, which provide standardized structural support for control panel components, simplify installation and maintenance, optimize layouts, and enable flexibility and scalability.
• 680 wire ducts and wire duct accessories, which neatly route cables to improve panel organization, optimize space, protect cables from mechanical hazards and electromagnetic interference (EMI), improve panel safety by reducing the risk of electrical shorts, and simplify maintenance and are available in slotted and non-slotted variants.
• 4,580 relays, relay sockets, and relay accessories, which facilitate control panels' power, logic, and timing functions, manage load control, and monitor, isolate, and amplify signals. Options include monitoring, power, signal, solid-state, and time-delay relays, industrial optocouplers, and relay modules.
• 4,980 connectivity components, including wires, industrial cable assemblies, and terminals, lugs, and ferrules, all of which establish robust, reliable power, signal, and data connections between panel components and devices and factory floor equipment and machinery. Cable assemblies also improve panel organization and space optimization, support scalability, and often provide environmental protection. Options include 7/8", M8, M12, double-ended between series, double-ended in–series cordsets with PVC and PUR jackets.
• 110 tools essential for safe and efficient panel assembly and maintenance, including wire duct cutters and crimpers.

"The RS PRO Total Panel Integration portfolio offers a comprehensive selection of industrial control panel solutions that improve operational efficiencies, exhibit rock-solid reliability, and deliver measurable cost savings," said RS PRO Director Erick Moreira. "These rigorously tested and field-proven control panel products help customers streamline and safeguard complex industrial processes, optimize their automation, maximize system uptime, and simplify installation and maintenance."

The RS PRO portfolio features more than 90,000 products across 1,500 technologies to satisfy the needs of virtually every industrial application and working environment and provides competitive savings compared to branded alternatives without compromising performance, allowing customers of all sizes to work confidently. These products are meticulously designed and manufactured to meet the needs of today's industrial engineers and deliver an exceptional combination of quality, choice, and value. RS PRO products can be combined into integrated solutions to further simplify customers' sourcing and purchasing processes and are all backed by the RS PRO Seal of Approval, which is only awarded after a rigorous testing, inspection, and auditing process based on demanding international standards. In addition, most RS PRO products are covered by a three-year warranty. This unique value proposition has earned RS PRO more than half a million industrial customers and counting, as well as an astonishingly low return rate of less than 0.05%.

For more information about the RS PRO Total Panel Integration portfolio, including essential control components for both in and on the panel, please visit the links embedded here, check out the RS PRO panel building solutions product guide, the RS PRO tools flyer, and the RS PRO wire and cable products flyer.

For more information about industrial control panels, check out relevant selections from the RS Expert Advice series, including "Industrial control panel design and engineering" and episode 36 of the RS Expert Advice podcast.

For assistance identifying, deploying, procuring, and maintaining RS PRO products engineered to help you automate with ease, contact your local RS representative at 1.866.433.5722 or reach out to our technical support team.

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RS PRO Panel Integration PR.jpg

About RS

RS is a high-service global product and service solutions provider for industrial customers, enabling them to operate efficiently and sustainably. We operate in 36 markets, stock over 830,000 industrial and specialist products, and list an additional five million relevant for our industrial customers, sourced from over 2,500 suppliers. This extensive range supports our customers across the industrial lifecycle of designing, building, and maintaining equipment and operations. We enhance their experience through a tailored service model, leveraging our efficient physical, digital, and process infrastructure sustainably. We combine a technically led and digitally enabled approach with an exceptional team of experts; ultimately, it's our people that make the difference. Our purpose, making amazing happen for a better world, reflects our focus on delivering results for people, planet, and profit. 

RS Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with stock ticker RS1, and in the year ended March 31, 2025, reported revenue of $3,381.64 million. For more information, please visit https://www.rsgroup.com/ or connect with us on LinkedIn or X (Twitter).

About RS in the Americas

In the Americas region, RS stocks more than 250,000 industrial and electronic products from more than 700 trusted suppliers. These solutions cover categories extending from automation and control equipment to interconnect, passive, active, and electromechanical components and include more than 90,000 high-quality, competitively priced RS PRO products. For more information, please visit https://us.rs-online.com or connect with us via social media on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Editorial Contact & Media Inquiries:

Erica Goode, RS Director of Marketing – U.S. and Canada

Erica.Goode@rsgroup.com  

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/automate-with-ease-with-the-rs-pro-total-panel-integration-portfolio-302654994.html

SOURCE RS