ARC Briefing Report – Accutech

By Harry Forbes, Senior Analyst, ARC Advisory Group

Accutech briefed ARC analysts during a recent visit. The firm is a small instrumentation and OEM company that has had an outsized impact in recent years due to its market leadership in the field of industrial wireless field devices. With the rapid development of commercial wireless technology, it was not difficult for process automation suppliers to envision that wireless communications would become an important part of process field devices 'someday'. One could argue that Accutech moved the question of wireless field devices out of research and into development by their commercialization of products in what was until then exclusively a research or visionary realm. Accutech's success in this very thorny product design challenge no doubt shifted wireless R&D at automation majors into high gear.

Certainly Accutech understood the application requirements well. Another attitude that Accutech brought to wireless (perhaps from their experience as an OEM) was the need for generous design margins in many areas, not just wireless communications. The company has been the leader in figuring out ways to add ruggedness to their wireless products. For example Accutech pioneered the deployment of antennas mounted inside the protection of the field device. This made the device perform much more reliably in applications where it was subject to mechanical abuse during installation or during operation.

Accutech has also led in deployment of improved batteries for wireless sensors and has avoided the addition of energy harvesting technologies to its devices. Instead they have relied on superior batteries and effective power management to give their products the long lifetimes they know customers demand. Margins in temperature specifications are also a point of pride and the company enthuses about instances where units have performed for extended periods outside of their specified temperature range. In summary Accutech's original strategy for wireless transmitters was not just to be first to produce them but also to differentiate its products from the poor customer perception of wireless by building in extreme industrial ruggedness, long life, and the lack of a vulnerable external antenna.

The company introduced a 2^nd generation of wireless devices in 2005, with a focus on scaling up installations and improving embedded software for a better customer experience. This change was mostly an improved 'base station' for the transmitters. Also recently added are devices operating in European ISM bands. Accutech has thumbed its nose at wireless mesh networking technologies (such as IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee) and continues to do so, though it is adding redundancy features to the base stations. In bucking the mesh network trend, Accutech seems to have developed some converts among the automation majors. Besides Accutech, automation majors Endress + Hauser, Flowserve, Honeywell and Yokogawa will present proposals to this month's ISA's SP100 standards meeting that feature point-point sensor radios rather than sensor mesh networks. Accutech's participation as a presenter at this meeting is indicative of its influence, in spite of its small size.

What to do next? The company, like many others in the wireless sensor space, is stretching to maintain a rapid R&D pace while also broadening its solution so that its offering more completely covers the requirements of end user applications even for the parts of a solution that have little or nothing to do with wireless sensors. Accutech has partered with Aks Labs for data acquisition equipment and is working with Oil & Gas integrator Tarco to ease its entry into very large multi-vendor projects where Accutech devices can achieve higher volumes. Additional strategic partnerships are pending.

Accutech also gave ARC a quick look at some products in development. The company is taking advantage of the smaller size radio components and also moving to a more modular approach for radios in its products. This will enable them to quickly adopt improvements or standards with less impact on the remaining longer-lived portions of their designs.

Accutech has been active in ISA's SP100 and believes that increasing standardization would be a huge plus for a small but accomplished wireless company like theirs. This is certainly the case. However the path to ISA standardization of wireless sensors remains unclear. As long as Accutech can harmonize its own product plans with those of far larger suppliers like Endress + Hauser, Flowserve, Honeywell and Yokogawa, they will continue to grow and be a force in this emerging market.

Contact:

General Sales
Tel: 1-978-568-0500 ext. 226
Email: sales@accutechinstruments.com