Totalizing Fluid Meters and Counting Devices

Approximately 225 U.S. establishments manufactured totalizing fluid meters and counting devices in the late 2000s. These establishments generated nearly $5.58 billion in revenue that year, sustaining a steady annual increase reaching nearly $1 billion beyond the $4.6 billion the industry achieved in the early part of the decade. In 2008, revenue was approximately $6 billion. The industry's workforce in 2007 numbered 14,262 with payroll totaling just under $713 million.

Totalizing fluid meters measure fluids in quantity terms (such as gallons or cubic feet) and indicate total fluid volume rather than the rates of flow indicated by the flow meters used in industrial process control. The most common type of totalizing fluid meter is the positive-displacement meter, which operates by allowing the fluid to enter a chamber where the force of fluid motion causes a diaphragm, disk, vane, or other element to move or rotate. Each cycle of the rotating or moving element generates a signal that is sent to the registering component of the meter, which tallies or indicates the total fluid quantity.

Small positive-displacement meters used for registering consumption of water in households or businesses have traditionally been the largest product type in the integrating and totalizing fluid meter segment, followed by meters for registering residential gas consumption. Other significant product groups in this segment include registering or totalizing gas meters for commercial or industrial use, impeller meters and consumption-registering rotary and turbine gas meters, gauges for computing pressure and temperature corrections in industrial processes, and liquid meters used in industrial bulk plants and pipelines.

Fueled by the needs of the process control industry beginning in the 1980s, fluid meter technology began to evolve at a dramatic pace, offering enormous improvements in reliability, accuracy, and range of measurable flow rates. Several important new flow measurement technologies were most likely to have an impact on the totalizing fluid meter industry. These included the use of "nonintrusive" measuring devices that do not change the characteristics of the fluids they measure; improved meter maintenance performance through advanced diagnostic techniques; a trend toward solid-state meters with no moving parts; and perhaps even the eventual replacement of the traditional meter itself by pipes that contain their own measuring sensors. In the mid-2000s, meters for gas and liquids accounted for approximately 31 percent ($1.32 billion) of the industry's shipment values.

In the mid- to late 2000s, 60 percent of the industry's shipment values were derived from the motor vehicle instrument sector, which produced speedometers, tachometers, odometers, fuel level gauges, water temperature gauges, ammeters, oil pressure gauges, and other motor vehicle instruments. Most of these products are installed in new vehicles. Customers dealing with this segment of the industry often are large automotive suppliers that provide vehicle manufacturers with subassemblies, such as dashboards complete with instruments, ready for installation. The motor vehicle instruments segment is expected to grow in accordance with the increases in the worldwide demand for vehicles, and with the development of integrated electronic digital controls.

Counters and timers, which accounted for approximately 10 percent of shipment values, are used in a wide variety of manufacturing applications and typically indicate how many items have been fed into a machine, how fast a machine is operating, how many items have been produced, how long it will take to perform a process, or what time a specific event will occur.

Firms in six states--California, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas--accounted for 25 percent of the industry's shipment values in the mid-2000s. Companies in this industry include American Meter Company; Badger Meter Inc.; Daniel Measurement and Control, a division of Emerson Electric; Engineering Measurements; the Foxboro Company; Milton Roy Company/Flow Control Division; Schlumberger Limited; Rosemount Inc., a division of Emerson Electric; and Stewart Warner Instrument Corp.

Badger Meter Inc.'s net sales for 2008 were nearly $280 million with a workforce numbering 1,224. In 2006, the company enjoyed double-digit increases in sales of their Orion proprietary radio frequency automatic meter reading (AMR) system for the utility residential market. American Meter was aligned as a member of ELSTER-AMCO Group, a subsidiary of Germany-based Ruhrgas Industries, in 2006. American Meter manufacturers natural gas meters, regulators, shutoff devices, filters, test equipment, and accessories. Another industry leader, Dresser, Inc., makes flow control products (valves, actuators, and the like for oil and gas exploration), measurement systems (gas pumps and point of sale terminals for gas stations and convenience stores), and power systems.