Keeping costs in check always matters

T&MW: How big a factor is cost control to engineers involved in test and measurement?

Bailey: We get our feedback from the marketplace. Whenever MCC makes a breakthrough in reducing the cost of a measurement, we increase our sales volume significantly. Our company is organized operationally—not technically—around cost control. The cost of a DAQ board is small compared to the costs of operating a company, marketing products, and paying engineers' salaries. So, we are always pushing the envelope to control those operational costs.

Ben Bailey CEO Measurement Computing  Corp. (MCC) Middleboro, MA Ben Bailey has been involved in the test and measurement industry for more than 20 years. He graduated from Babson College, where he focused on quantitative methods and operations research, and went on to serve as the VP of sales at MetraByte. In 1989, he co-founded ComputerBoards (the company changed its name to Measurement Computing Corp. in 2000), and he eventually led the MCC team that developed the patented SoftWIRE graphical programming interface and served as founder and CEO of the company's SoftWIRE Technology subsidiary.

For more Q&A with Ben Bailey on such topics as engineering challenges, Web issues, and product standards, read the continuation of this interview.

T&MW: Can you cite some MCC products that reflect this cost-control strategy?

Bailey: An important example is the 6000 series DAQ and PCI boards, which we positioned as functionally equivalent to NI products but costing 30% less. These included analog-to-digital boards, digital-to-analog boards, counter/timers, and digital I/O. The reception in the marketplace was astounding, which is proof that customers are greatly concerned about costs.

The exciting news this year has been our new Personal Measurement Devices. An alternative to PCI boards, these DAQ modules easily connect to the USB port of a desktop or laptop computer. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, the devices cut down on installation time and reduce costs, since they can be easily moved and shared within the engineering team. In short, here's a product selling for as little as $100 with all the capability of a $500 board that had to be installed in your PC. And they really lend themselves to field test and other portable applications.

T&MW: How about software innovations?

Bailey: Releasing our SoftWIRE graphical interface for Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET was very significant. There's a lot of interest among engineers in graphical programming, and SoftWIRE allows both nonprogrammers and occupational programmers to create powerful software applications without having to write any code.

SoftWIRE operates within Visual Studio and allows you to freely integrate C code, Basic code, and graphical programming diagrams. We also offer this software package at no charge, so its adoption has jumped dramatically.

T&MW: Looking ahead, what new directions do you see for PC-based test?

Bailey: The big advances are likely to be in software developments that make it less complex to connect sensors, acquire and use data, and give your data more context. For example, I may have the data I've gathered from my dynamometer, but what does this information mean in terms of the overall application?

I also think that test engineers will be gaining access to more and more specialized services through the Internet, such as information or software from engineers skilled in niche areas of measurement science. Engineers once employed by big companies are breaking away and selling such services to everyone via the Web. As a company, we will be looking for ways to help our customers tap into such services.