15 YEARS
This is how compressed air works Within the industry, compressed air is a much-used form of energy. You can best compare compressed air to the air that is pumped into a bicycle tyre. Air is compressed into a bicycle tyre, you do that by using muscle power to pump up the tyre with the result that energy becomes stored in the air. With a bicycle tyre, the air provides riding comfort and road grip. In an industrial plant, the air is transported under pressure through piping, and subsequently used as energy in order to operate production machinery.
Why compressed air? For many production processes, compressed air is essential. Think of bottle blowing or spraying paint. Air is relatively safe and clean: electricity can short-circuit or cause a shock, for example. Air cannot, of course. A great deal of energy can be stored in it, which can be made available at once, as the circus act on the picture demonstrates.
It’s VPInstruments’ birthday! VPInstruments has been supplying flow meters & energy management systems for compressed air since 1999. Since then, many different companies have purchased products such as the VPFlowmate, the VPFlowScope and VPVision and placed them in their industrial plants. While other energy meters usually only measure consumption, VPInstruments measures many more things at the same time. Not only are you able to read out how much air is consumed, but also where, when and at what pressure. In this way, an air pressure- or gas leak can be discovered easily, or, you will quickly notice when a lot of energy is going to a department where you wouldn’t expect so much consumption. So
15 YEARS
the products of VPInstruments have already been providing cost-saving solutions to many companies for fifteen years. And that is being celebrated... with this booklet! In this booklet you will read how VPInstruments has developed from year to year. From an experiment with a small plank and screws, to a company that distributes products across the entire world. You’ll get to know more about the technology behind our products, read about (other) clients’ experiences, and get to know the faces behind VPInstruments.
1974 The beginning! It was in the year 1974 that young Anton van Putten received the following study assignment from one of his professors: Make a flow sensor from silicon. The eventual CEO of VPInstruments, Pascal van Putten, could only just walk when his father too was taking baby steps. Baby steps towards the chip that would ultimately be the heart of every product that Pascal would later produce. Anton speaks about his graduation period at the TU (University of Technology) Delft: “After having read an enormous amount, one evening I started experimenting. I started with ‘hot wires’: it was known that you could use them for flow measurements.” With a small plank, four screws and the hot wires, Anton got down to work.
1974 - First test plank with hot wires
“At two o’ clock in the morning, I suddenly had it! If I could succeed in making hot wires from silicon, then I would be taking a big step towards realising my graduate assignment.” No sooner said than done. Anton constructed a plank with a square of four filaments on it. “With a battery and a voltmeter added, these hot wires formed an electrical bridge. It was lit up in a nice red colour.” That was number one. Now to see whether the plank could also function as a sensor. “Using the vacuum cleaner, I blew air over the wires and it reacted: one part of the light went out. If I reversed the air current, the light went out on the other side too! The concept for the anemometer was born! Subsequently I reduced the size of this design by 1000 times, and put it in a silicon chip.” The graduation assignment was completed (with a grade B!), and, even more important: this sensor grew to become the chip which forms the basis of the flowmeter that later ended up measuring compressed air and gases in industrial plants all over the world.
1974-1998 Dedication to research & development The sensor was only the beginning. “At this stage, many applications were possible, and we had to research them,” says Anton. “Because once you start, you keep going. Science: it’s a sort of love.” Anton founded a company dedicated to further development of the flow sensor, AnMar Research. In the decades following 1974, the van Putten family attic changed into a real laboratory. Boxes full of folders and research were on the floor, experiments on the big table. Anton spent as much time there as possible, and his sons too fell in love: with science. At the end of the ’80s, Anton obtained his PhD. in the subject, at the Catholic University in Leuven. Half-way through the ’90s, Pascal’s brothers – Michel and Maurice who themselves were studying by now, collaborated on the further development. “We discovered more, published about this in trade magazines, and ultimately arrived at a new concept for measuring flow over an extremely wide measurement range,” says Anton.
After this milestone, the van Putten men examined whether this technology was also suitable for measuring gas consumption in residential buildings. As a youngster of eighteen, Pascal mainly occupied himself with the designing of the product and seeking necessary components. The research in the engineering family had thus yielded a lot, but at the end of the ’nineties things went a stage further. Michel was looking for a subject for PhD research so the obvious thing to do here was to opt for the flow sensor. Pascal, who by now was just about to graduate himself, saw commercial possibilities and posed the question: “Say, Dad, may I use the sensor for my own company?”
The beauty of our silicon flow sensor is in limitless possibilities for measurement accuracy and dynamic range with unlimited potential for growth in commerce. One can think of gas meters, leak detection and portable calibration equipment. We believe that the future of digital flow metering starts with Silicon.
Maurice van Putten Co-founder VPInstruments
1998 Starting up! Pascal: “By now, the flow sensor was such a good, stable device and so far developed that I had to do something with it. And that’s why I thought: it’s now or never”. The TU Delft had introduced a new programme in order to help high-tech starters (Technostarters) in setting up a new company, and we had a working prototype. I decided to try it with the company for a year... and today fortunately things have got a bit out of hand! “Naturally I let him use the chip,” says Anton. “Pascal is more enterprising and more commerciallyoriented than I am. Pascal was precisely what the sensor needed.” With the approval of his father and the help of the Technostarters regulation of the TU Delft, the younger Van Putten started up Van Putten Instruments, or: VPInstruments. “With my father’s prototype as the starting point, we developed a very versatile flow meter for laboratory applications. The VP4. It was an enormously expensive and complicated piece of equipment, but it was a beginning!” The TU Delft, in the meantime, had been impressed and encouraged Pascal to participate in the
cKinsey New Venture ’98 business plan contest. A M bit of entrepreneurship was tapped into. Together with Jehan Coyajee, a friend from student days, and brother Michel, this challenge was accepted. The greatest challenge for the men lay in thinking commercially. Michel: “We were still thinking too much as engineers. It was a great meter that had an amazingly wide range, but there was absolutely no need for it in the market. Pascal adds: “Because of the competition, we were forced to reflect on what exactly our market was and who our clients would be.” That demanded a great deal of thinking, adjustments in the way in which the whole family – for everyone joined in thinking, naturally – looked at the product. And that yielded the competition prize. “We received 50,000 guilders! With that, we could further develop our meter and both were very desirable, because otherwise we would have had to arrange a loan somewhere ourselves…”
I was primarily involved in the start-up of VPInstruments; that was inspiring, instructive, exciting and at times, tough as well. In order to get orders finished, we sometimes worked until late into the night. And the market-oriented thinking for the first product was a difficult task for us, too! But we were able to turn that around. From then on, market-oriented thinking has remained essential within VPInstruments.
Michel van Putten Co-founder VPInstruments
1999 From prototype to product In the year 1999, the theme was product development. “The prototype we had was a good start,” says Pascal, “except that it still wasn’t easy to produce and could only be applied within systems under low pressure. Then we completely adapted the construction so that the meter was really pressure-tight and was consequently capable of
making measurements under high pressure. At Gasunie in Groningen, we were allowed to test out the measuring instrument in a high-pressure gas pipeline.” So, in 1999 VPInstruments still wasn’t actually selling anything, but it made an enormous leap forward in the development of the product.
The logo VPInstruments has a recognisable logo: it consists of a number of coloured patches and two little eyes. “When we had to create the business plan for the contest, naturally we also suddenly needed writing paper and business cards, and, yes, a logo,” laughs Pascal. “I started messing about with paint a bit, projected this on a screen and painted a copy of it.” The first copy, for that matter, still hangs proudly in the VPInstruments head office in Delft. “Nowadays, if people ask what the painting means, I always say that it’s what they wish to see in it. Plus two eyes, which creatively looking for the correct solution.”
2000 First sale The year 2000 was an important year for VPInstruments. All our manpower, thinking and research led to the first sellable model. Pascal: “While in the first few years we were having to make ends meet, and hardly actually sold anything, now there finally was a product that we backed and which was ready to go on the market.” The prototype as it had existed in the previous year had been considerably improved. “The inside had been well designed, the cabinet had a different colour, the meter was handier in use and countless improvements in the software had been implemented.” A buyer had presented himself, too. A PhD student at the TU Eindhoven was looking for a piece of equipment that could handle a wide measuring range. The VP4 could do this, and so 2000 entered the books as the year that VPInstruments sold its very first product!
The VP4, for laboratory applications
2001 Improvement The VP4 turned out to be difficult to produce, and difficult to sell. Potential clients found the product too expensive, and too awkward in use. So there was plenty of room for improvement. Fred Visschers is a name which must be mentioned here. Fred was a friend of Anton’s, ex-owner of a company which produced electronic products, and had become Pascal’s coach in the area of strategic and technical thinking. “And he made me see the light in 2001,” according to Pascal. “That thing is still much too complicated to make,” said Fred. “You must go and develop a standard product. Something that you can put on the client’s desk as it is, ready for use. At the moment, it’s still too much bother, and it’s much too complex. You can never produce this in large numbers.” Pascal confirmed that. It was indeed a ‘headache product’ to put together, and far too expensive. It had to be simpler. Nine months it took, to simplify the appliance. The VP4 transformed into a simple, compact and user friendly appliance that could also be put together quickly too. For such a new product, a new name was appropriate. Companies such as Phillips and ASML bought this new product: the VPFlowmate®.
The first VPFlowMate速 was extremely compact
2002 Birth of the compressed air flow meter 2002 was the year in which everything really turned around for Pascal and his company. Around six o’ clock one evening, the telephone rang. The man on the phone had a Belgian accent, and he described a problem that he had. A large manufacturer of compressors in Belgium had hired him to seek a mobile meter for compressed air, but he had not been able to find a suitable measuring instrument. The question arose: “Do you have a product that shows how much air a compressor is generating?” “We have that,” said Pascal. “For 499 euro.” “This I must see,” said the potential client. “When can you drop by?”
This might become the biggest client that VPInstruments had had up to now. “Together with my father, I went to pay a visit,” recounts Pascal. “And we went countless times. We gave demo’s, worked further on a meter that met their needs, did more tests, constructed all sorts of test set-ups and gave another demo. And all that several times over.” Brother Michel too helped with this Belgian challenge. “There were times when we weren’t greeted with a ‘good morning’ as we came in, but with ‘we have a problem’. Fortunately, we were able to resolve them well.” And how. Ultimately VPInstruments landed the client, with a new product. The VPFlowmate Probe had been born. An ‘insertion flow meter’, the company’s latest child, and Pascal was contented. Landing this client in Belgium cost me and my father an enormous amount of time, but when they ultimately selected us, it gave us a tremendous amount of satisfaction.
I’ve been a client of VPInstruments for eight years now, and what I so much appreciate in our collaboration is that we think along with each other. VPInstruments thinks along with me as a client, but we’re also allowed to think along with them. I’m asked what could be better and how much any possible adjustments should cost. I appreciate that very much: I have the feeling that I’m really being heard.
Ruud Fluks ParkerStore
Pascal on visual material in advertisements. “I find it important for us to be distinctive and recognisable in our advertisements. Sometimes I ask one of my three beautiful daughters to pose with our products. This photo was made to illustrate the simplicity of the VPFlowScope in-line.�
Trade fairs Every year in Hannover, the Hannover Messe is organised: the largest and most important industrial fair in the world. It’s a fair at which more than sixty countries from all over the world participate, with more than 200,000 visitors who work in the industrial world. Among its visitors were a great many distributors of compressors and compressed-air systems. For VPInstruments, this was really a step forward.
One of the loveliest moments in the fifteen-year existence of VPInstruments was, in fact, our first successful participation in the international fair in Hannover: the Hannover Messe. Securing a place there with our company, coming into contact with potential clients and going home with almost three hundred leads was a real milestone. I think back to that moment with a smile on my face.
Pascal van Putten CEO of VPInstruments
VPInstruments’ employees about VPInstruments To me, the people make the company. The staff that we have always possess this combination of qualities: creative, enthusiastic and persistent. That’s what makes VPInstruments a success.
If I think of VPInstruments, I think of perseverance, innovation and sustainability. Through our innovative products, we show how you can deal with energy in a more sustainable way, how you can see how much you are wasting and how much of that can be saved.
Pascal van Putten, CEO of VPInstruments
Nietin Somaroe, working at VPInstruments since 2013
The greatest strength of VPInstruments is the constant urge to improve. This applies to the products, but also to the team and the individuals. The company keeps growing, is becoming more professional, and we notice that from the clients. Nice, positive reactions are continuously being given, which for us is yet again a reason to keep achieving and innovating.
I’m grateful that I’ve already been working for half a year at VPInstruments: a driven, passionate company with motivated employees and a motivated employer. Everyone joins in thinking together, everyone runs their legs off, and we are all proud of our products.
Sander de Knegt has been involved with VPInstruments since 2009
Mirelle van Leenen, working at VPInstruments since 2014
I would describe VPInstruments as high-tech, transparent, flexible, stubborn, recalcitrant, innovative, nicely crazy, a little terrier of a company, and no-nonsense. We dare to go beyond the well-trodden paths, react quickly to changing conditions and consequently make state-ofthe-art products. Edwin Melessen, involved with VPInstruments since 2012
The atmosphere at VPInstruments is terrifically good, and I noticed that even before I went to work there. My first day was the 1st of January 2013 but, together with my partner, I was invited to come to the Christmas Dinner in 2012. When I actually started, there was a bunch of flowers on my desk with a little card, saying: ‘A very hearty welcome to the VPInstruments team.’ I found that so nice! Ester Baggerman, working at VPInstruments since 2013
It was with much enthusiasm that I started working at VPInstruments in 2012: a company with a lovely product in an interesting niche market. It turned out to be a good choice: the people who work at VP are driven, passionate, add to their learning every day and are crazy about providing added value and correct client experience.
I started working at VPInstruments because I stand for what we stand for: Managing energy consumption. So, no wastage and what is also important of course, a greener world.
Menno Verbeek, working at VPInstruments since 2012
Dieter Grossklaus, involved with VPInstruments since the beginning of 2004
Antonio Morales, working at VPInstruments since 1st April 2013
VPInstruments is a young and dynamic company which developed quickly in an international niche market and, with external partners, tries to conquer the world with products that are innovative, unusual in form and design. For me, the collaboration with these young, enthusiastic people is refreshing and stimulating.
The most inspiring moment of my career at VPInstruments really is The development that the company has undergone during recent years. In the period that I’ve been working here, naturally I’ve made my contribution to that too. For me, a very valuable experience. If When I look back comparing the company then to the company now, I am eager to continue this upward trend.
Maarten Kornet, working at VPInstruments since February 2011
The strength of the company is, in the first place, the product. The products show all of VPI’s creativity. They are innovative products, designed in accordance with the present-day needs of clients. An idea for a product can sometimes be so simple, such as the VPFlowScope, in which pressure- and flow measurements are combined. VPI knows its clients. And with VPVision as remote monitoring, VPI is, together with the market, moving towards the future. But these products would be nothing without the creativity, passion and intensity of the people in the company. The staff, therefore, are just as great a strength.
Cynthia Kuiper Sales and Marketing Director with VPInstruments from 2006-2011
Team VPInstruments 2013-2014 Menno – Maarten – Pascal Mirelle – Sander – Ester – Edwin - Antonio
2005 Focus on compressed air By now, VPInstruments’ focus was almost entirely on the measurement of compressed air. After much research, testing, tinkering again, testing yet again, in this year we started the development of a new product, the VPFlowScope Pascal: “The idea was to create an all in one solution. It should measure flow, pressure and temperature.” We discussed this idea with our partner Geveke and some other key distributors, and they were very enthusiastic about the concept. “The three in once concept would save our clients time and money, because they would need only one insertion point for the entire measurement. We have completely redeveloped the electronics that it contains; design bureau
Job Kneppers gave the housing a very distinctive and recognizable shape, and even the holder which contains the sensor has been improved. What is also handy is the fact that the user can separate the display of the VPFlowScope from the sensor module. Consequently, the product is easier to service. It is a sophisticated product and I take pride in being able to say that it has been selling well for eight years by now.” According to Pascal, the VPFlowScope is ‘the Swiss Army knife’ among his products.
The VPFlowScope is the Swiss Army knife for the measurement of compressedair consumption. It measures flow, pressure and temperature at the same time and is very simple to operate: measuring becomes as simple as taking a photo.
Pascal van Putten CEO of VPInstruments
2007 VPFlowScope The launch of the unique VPFlowScope product line took place in 2007. With the introduction of this product line, VPInstruments also created a really large customer base. Pascal: “Up to then, it had never been very easy. Naturally, we regularly had moments we thought ‘Yes, with a stiff dose of perseverance we’re going to make it’, but in 2007, peace came. We were certainly going to make it, the client base was large enough and the company was growing ever faster. By this time, we had sold hundreds of products among more than fifty clients, and were growing by an average of 25% a year.”
VP Instruments has always been very attentive to our company when we need support. Their products and service have allowed us to keep a close eye on our air-distribution system. The VP Vision system is easy to follow and we have been able to customize it to meet our monitoring needs. In the effort to continue to evolve our effort, we will soon be adding the alarm module capabilities to our VP Vision system, which displays our faith in VP Instruments thus far.
David Aguirre Mechanical Planner & Engineer Site Maintenance California Steel Industries
2009 Taking the next step in compressed air monitoring “Clients started putting more and more of our products in a single industrial plant, in order to be able to measure multiple locations in the production process,” says Pascal in relation to 2009. “This way, clients get more and more data. We developed software that brought all this data together in one place: VPVision. The complete solution for the monitoring and safeguarding of compressed-air equipment.” An end, therefore, to complicated collections of information and calculations. “The great added value is that whether you’re a layman or a compressed-air expert you can see where the energy is going and what it’s costing.” This software generated happy clients, for a lot of energy is saved. “One good example is Kikkoman in Groningen, where VPVision revealed a large compressed air leak, which would have cost over 20,000 Euro per year. And wouldn’t you know that this had just about been the investment in the measuring
system. So this shows very nicely that the earn back time can be very short and clients can annually reckon on significant savings.” With the new system, more and more client visits were made too. And for the staff of VPInstruments, that’s a nice extra to the already challenging job. “The nice thing is that you get to places that are the source of products that you often take for granted,” says Pascal. “You have no idea of everything that precedes the moment before the soy gets into the bottle, for example. Or how steel is rolled and welded into tubes. Or how a passenger aircraft is made. We visit those sorts of places too. By measuring the air consumption at these sorts of companies, you are a brief witness to their everyday course of affairs.”
Above all, I want to say: carry on like this! The basic principle of VPInstruments in the chain of process control is: to measure is to know, and they do that well. With the measuring instruments that we buy, data have become insight-yielding. I’d like to see VPInstruments take their instruments a step further still. Currently, we ourselves make the translation of the data for our bookkeeper, but if the products of VPInstruments were to make that conversion, then that, yet again, would be a pleasant improvement in the chain of process control.
Bertus Tibben On behalf of Bolletje
Distributors Skilled and dedicated partners are key to our success. Distributors offer added value in the form of knowledge, advice and total solutions in the area of compressed-air savings. “Within that, our products are an essential component of their solution. In that way, therefore, we complement each other perfectly", so says Pascal. Since our 10th year of existence in 2009, we began organising annual meetings for our distributors, in which knowledge is shared, product training courses are given and distri butors can engage in mutual networking. Several years ago we adjusted the concept to two distributor training courses a year, in which the focus is more on product training. The city of Delft offers a splendid ambience here, and naturally, this makes it extra pleasant for our worldwide distributors to come along.
2011 Expanding measurement possibilities In 2011, yet again, a new product came on the market. This time, a lot of hard work had been put into the development of a new sensor. Pascal: “We discovered that the VPFlowScope did not always work equally well when the compressed air was wet, and naturally we wanted to change that.” In first instance, the demand came from a client. “There was demand for a meter that could measure directly behind the compressor, in damp air. In such situations it ‘rains’ in the pipework, and if you open a ball valve you get water flying around
your ears. The conditions are a bit like cycling through a shower of rain. Because our sensors work on the basis of cooling, each drop is felt by the sensor. This caused ‘peaks’ in the measurement signals. So a different product was needed. Within six months we had developed this meter for our client, and he was terrifically happy. After this, of course, we also made other clients happy with this VPFlowScope differential pressure meter.”
The VPFlowScope DP for wet compressed air measurement.
2012 VPVision completely web-based In this year, VPInstruments continued developing VPVision still further, into a completely web-based version. “With the VPVision 2.0, the entire system can be monitored online, from the input to the output,” explains Pascal. Clients thought the world of it. Not surprisingly, either. “It is an easy system, for which you don’t need to install any complicated software.
And now, yet again, there are many clients who have saved money. Just as well, because spending money on leakages every month that’s just a waste.”
Congratulations on the 15th Anniversary celebration for VP Instruments. As you know, Air Power USA is one of the largest ‘Brand Neutral’ compressedair system consulting groups. We have multiple types of system reviews working all over North America and other parts of the world. And, we own over $500,000 USD of measurement equipment to keep the business going. The VPFlowScope flow meter which Air Power began using five years ago has become the backbone of flowmeter action. We use them very effectively to measure flow, temperature, and pressure and data collection at one point. We have also supervised the installation of several VPFlowScope flowmeters for efficiency sustainability programs with central air management systems.
Hank van Ormer
On behalf of Air Power USA
At a Jubilee, it is nice to look back, and I can still remember exactly how Pascal came along to Geveke with his first prototype VPFlowMate. After a difficult start and intensive collaboration, VPInstruments responded correctly to the market’s need and adapted their products to that. It’s great to see how the company is growing further.
Ab Soekhoe
Manager Geveke Energy Services
2013 VPFlowScope in-line “We had already introduced the three-in-one technology in the VPFlowScope probe in 2007, and wanted to implement this for the in-line variant too” recounts Pascal. “As far as we’re concerned, the three-in-one method the measurement of flow, pressure and temperature is the way to measure compressed air. With the VPFlowScope In-Line, that takes place in a modern, real-time manner. In this way, our clients have a uniform product experience.”
2014 The future 2014 is the year in which the fifteen-year existence of VPInstruments is being celebrated. And there will easily be another fifteen years as well. Pascal: “In the coming years too, we shall continue the development of innovative products, with and for our clients, with the result that even more clients can deal more purposefully, more sustainably and more economically with energy: and ultimately, with our planet.”
2013: VPFlowScope in-line
Š 2014 Van Putten Instruments BV Text: Lianne Collignon Layout: Spore Creation Special thanks to Anton van Putten for recounting the history of the flow sensor, to our staff for sharing their experiences, and to everyone who has contributed to the creation of this booklet. www.vpinstruments.com