When we brought the FV Series Platform Scales (the predecessors of the HV) to the market in 1986, I was in the USA heading the third year of our US operation in California. I was proud and excited to demonstrate the FV to our representatives and dealers and I used every opportunity then available to me, at shows or face to face. Contrary to my expectations, however, I encountered all kinds of criticism about the plastic meterhead, aluminum load cells, rectangular platforms, plastic corners, the liquid crystal display and the AC adapter. People told me the plastics is no, no in US industrial weighing, and the weighing pans always must be square. The biggest criticism was against the aluminum load cell. They told me the aluminum cell would never stand-up to the industrial environment and would not last a month. "The AC adapter was a joke, and the LCD display was too dark," and the electronic scales could never replace the mechanical ones because they would go crazy with a walky-talky around and drain batteries too quickly. "The only good thing was price, though it could be too low for us to make money," some of them said.

Our vision was to replace all mechanical dial scales in use with our electronic platform scales, so we went to extreme lengths to reduce manufacturing costs by aggressively using new materials; that is, materials new to the weighing industry, like aluminum and plastics. We also deployed the surface mount technology for the first time in the weighing industry, envisioning mass production. With all the criticisms echoing in my ears, I had to go back to our engineers to ask why they designed them the way they did. They knew what kinds of criticism to expect as they deployed those new materials and processes. And they had all the answers, though they were intuitive and naive in expressing them.

The aluminum is a lot cheaper than steel, but was susceptible to shock and stress. To overcome those weaknesses, our engineers designed the pan support with steel cross beams and stoppers, which bend and work as shock absorbers against shock and overload. They also engineered the load cell to work with 1 to 1.5 mV/V output, which meant for the same weighing, the strain on our load cell to bend was half to one third of that of our competitors. We wanted to keep mechanical strain to the load cell at a minimum, because we knew how to handle the low micro voltage measurement better than anybody.

Our engineers knew the most common criticism of an electronic scale would be Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) and were prepared to offer our solutions to the market. They designed our platform scales to work even under radio frequency interference, to last long enough with batteries and incorporated large and clear wide-angle liquid crystal displays.

With the input from our engineers, things went much easier for me after that. We not only sold a great number of our electronic scales, we also replaced mechanical scales as people began to recognize the advantages of our electronic platform scales and their affordable prices. Thanks to our superb designs the failure rate in the field turned out to be so small, I stopped hearing complaints and heard instead, "The price is great. It never stops working."

So much for history, the real question is, "So what?" The answer is our new platform scales, HV/HW-G Series.

The market is flooded with inexpensive scales. A&D's challenge was to design a product that was better than its predecessors - our FV/FW and HV/HW. We have to be competitive in pricing, but most of all we have to be an A&D who can consistently bring products with new, real value and power to the market. We do not want to tarnish our reputation for quality and excellence by bringing our customers a mediocre or "me too" product.

You can appreciate the challenges put to our engineers - water and dust resistant bases; large and clean stainless weighing pans; clear, large and bright displays; rugged, durable construction; standard RS-232C interface; and set-point controls for batching. And it had to be competitively priced.

We accepted your challenge and present to you one of our finest products ever! The HV-G/HW-G Series Platform Scales.

The HV-G/HW-G Series has all those features you demanded. The Gore-Tex® membrane keeps moisture and dust away; a choice of Liquid Crystal or Vacuum Flourescent Display; standard RS-232C interface, set-point controls for batching. But we didn't stop there! The MOST outstanding feature of all is "1-for-3" concept: triple range weighing capacity and resolution. Now your customers can replace three scales with just one of our one HV-G platform scales. Our HW-G's dynamic range of 10,000 counts makes light work of precision weighing. Our new HV/H W-G doubles or triples the scope of work your customer can perform!

You challenged us - now I challenge you. Go to your customers and convince them that they can't afford to have anyone else's scale but our new HV/HW-G Series Platform Scales, because its increased power brings increased value and productivity to everyday weighing. Look at the specifications of our HV-G closely, you can replace three scales on the factory floor. What factory manager does not need more floor space for operations? With our HW-G, your customer may not need to pay a premium price for a precision balance.

I may not see a large crowd of people criticizing our scales this time, but I can see a large crowd of competitors gathering around or reverse engineering our new HV/HW-G Series!

You may address any comments concerning this editorial by email to Mr. Eto