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Award Description

Frost & Sullivan bestows the Market Engineering Award for Quality Control Leadership upon the company that has demonstrated superior quality control—over their existing competitors—in product manufacturing. Quality control is an essential element of satisfying customers, increasing repeat buying behavior, and assuring long-term market survival.

Research Methods

To choose the award recipient, the analyst team tracks all products and research and development projects within the industry. This is accomplished through interviews with all market participants, end-users, distributors, and extensive secondary and technology research.

Measurement Criteria

In addition to the methodology described above, there are specific criteria used to determine final competitor rankings in this industry. The award recipient has excelled based on one or more of the following criteria:

• Lowest defect percentage per batch of units produced by suppliers in current base year
• Product ability to fulfill customer needs, in terms of functionality anduser friendliness
• Number of breakdowns or services required per year Degree of connectivity
• Level of product support end-users receive from their vendors or suppliers

Master Meter has quietly revolutionized the water segment of the AMR market with its third generation AMR product called Dialog 3G, a wireless system fully integrated into the register of the water meter. Utilities now have a welcome alternative mobile RF AMR system at very attractive prices that has been rated as excellent by the utilities.

The Master Meter AMR and meter are manufactured as one hermetically sealed unit with the RF transceiver inside the standard register which prevents water from damaging the AMR meter module. It also eliminates the need for external connections, reducing the opportunity for tampering by cutting wires. Utilities indicated that with some AMR systems, the performance is good at first and then degrades over time. The degradation in performance has not been observed with the Master Meter system, and utilities attribute the continued high performance to the manufacturing process utilized by the company. Rather than house the transceiver in plastic, the company chose to use only glass and stainless steel. The end result is a product that is well suited for the pit environment that is common for water meters. To ease the installation process, Master Meter also preprograms the meter modules at the factory. This is important since the programming devices for AMR meter modules are very intolerant of entry errors. If an error is made during the programming process, the process must be aborted and restarted from the beginning.

Once the water meter is installed, the meter reading staff is pleased that meter readings are retrieved while driving at the posted speed limit, even when the meter pits are full of water. Master Meter has not had any complaints about driving speed. This is critical to utilities with service territories that encompass large tracts of industrial and commercial customers.

The meter module also is indifferent to which way the water flows. If a customer inverts the meter in an attempt to force the meter to run backwards, the meter continues to properly record water usage. To help customers, the system incorporates a leak detection system. If the water usage never stops completely within a 24-hour period, it sets a flag that is retrieved at the time of the meter read. In all, the system provides alerts for leak and backflow detection, and tampering. Utilities report that Master Meter has been able to supply products on short notice for every size of water meter. Utilities had expressed frustration with shipping and development delays with other suppliers. Master Meter stepped in to fill a need in the water market for reliable service and high-quality products.

Most utilities expressed surprise that the system with the highest performance and best customer service was priced lower than competitor prices by approximately $25 per endpoint. Although Master Meter prefers to follow a low-key approach to marketing, the water utilities are anything but quiet about the new system. It is being discussed at water utility association meetings as the elite system without an elite price.

Republished with permission of Frost & Sullivan