GaDova adding manufacturing facility at Pullman Center
At GaDova Technologies, “innovation and development are bloodlines to what we do,” said Fahad Alraddadi, one of two engineers who partnered to form the company a dozen years ago.
GaDova brainstorms mechanisms used in both medical imaging and locomotive applications. In its own latest development, the company will also make those innovations.
A 12-000-square-foot manufacturing facility is under construction on a four-acre lot in Pullman Center Business Park. Scheduled to open by year's end, the facility will initially employ about 12.
The site will eventually have about twice that many workers in the areas of manufacturing, assembly, testing and quality control. Additionally, the property footprint could also allow for another 20,000 feet in the future.
GaDova officials are seeking applicants for the Butler site, which will be staffed mainly by new, local hires.
The current 12-person staff, which includes Alraddadi and his business partner, William Monski, will mainly remain at the company headquarters in Allegheny County.
Initially named MR Medical Solutions, the company's first, and still predominant, focus is research and development of products on the medical imaging spectrum. Alraddadi and Monski are patent holders to a number of innovations in this field.
The men opened their own business in 2007 with an initial focus on standalone and subsystem components within magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.
“If you were to go and get an image for your knee, for example, they put you on the table, and put a device around your knee,” Alraddadi said. “Those devices are designed by people like us.”
The company continues work in that field, and it is currently developing three new innovations. But, Alraddadi said, “the evolution of our business also led us to non-medical applications.”
Specifically, new product uses are related to automated control systems for use in the locomotive industry.
One GaDova design is used by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) in Washington, D.C.
“Both technologies (RF and antenna design theory related to MRIs and locomotives) are about the electrical and electromechanical side of science,” Alraddadi said. “The application might be different, but electronics are electronics,”
When the company entered the locomotive-related product lines, it changed its name from MR Medical Solutions to GaDova to avoid confusion.
Until now, Alraddadi said, the company has mainly outsourced manufacturing. The facility will produce about 70 to 80 percent medical equipment, and 20 to 30 percent locomotive-related products.
Alraddadi said the company selected Butler County because of business contacts in the area, adding “We looked at the numbers. This is a cost-savings place to be.”
Joe Saeler, executive director of the Butler County Community Development Corporation, called the addition of GaDova welcome and exciting.
Alraddadi said production could begin as soon as the building is complete. According to Alraddadi, the facility will open “at about 60 percent Industry 4.0 ready. Our goal is to become 100 percent.”
Industry 4.0 is an initiative to promote digitization within manufacturing. Alraddadi said the hope is to digitally monitor equipment in the manufacturing line and manage via a dashboard.
“Through analytics, we could optimize the manufacturing process online to increase productivity and cut costs,” Alraddadi said. “That will help us have a dynamic manufacturing line that could be adjusted per product.”
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