FluidScan Oil Condition Monitor Wins Great Ideas Award

QinetiQ North America, a global developer of innovative technology solutions for national defense, today announced that its FluidScan monitor has won the 2008 Great Ideas Competition Award presented annually by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) at the Department of Defense (DoD) Maintenance Symposium & Exhibition. The competition recognizes promising new technologies, processes or business practices that participants decide will have a positive impact on DoD equipment maintenance.

This year’s award recognizes the QinetiQ North America Technology Solutions Group’s handheld FluidScan oil condition monitor, a transformational technology that takes oil analysis out of the laboratory and puts it directly into the hands of maintenance personnel so they can conduct their analyses immediately on site, saving time and money and prolonging the life of the equipment.

The FluidScan monitor can be used to quickly check the condition of lubricants such as hydraulic fluid, engine oil, turbine engine oil and/or the presence of contaminants to determine whether or not a piece of equipment can be used or must be taken out of service for maintenance. Current practices require maintenance crews to extract fluids samples and send them for testing to remote or centralized laboratories to determine whether or not maintenance is required.

“This device has the potential, in its simplest application, to provide lab-quality results in real-time for the soldier, marine, airman and sailor in the field under urgent conditions,” said LCDR David Scalf, Commander of the JOAP (Joint Oil Analysis Program) together with DoD’s NCMS/CTMA (National Center for Manufacturing Sciences/Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities) program. NCMS/CTMA championed this product within the DoD community and was responsible for its submission for this competition.

According to LCDR Scalf, “Putting the lab in the hands of the operator enables the operator to make time-sensitive decisions without reliance on the traditional central laboratory concept and has numerous advantages. The practical advantages are obvious. It can reduce sample volume, turnaround time and cost. The intangible benefits are intrinsically valued by the war fighter simply because the war fighter understands that adding this device to his or her toolkit means that critical equipment can be validated reliable and ready for the fight in just moments. For the war fighter this translates into the ability to use equipment to save lives and complete the mission.”

“We’ve drawn on our years of experience delivering workable solutions to complex technological challenges to take all of the complexities of oil and contaminant analysis out of the lab and put them into a handheld device that does all the work for the crew in the field,” said Dr. William Ribich, President of QinetiQ North America’s Technology Solutions Group. “Our customers asked for this capability in a rugged, handheld device, and we delivered it. The recognition we have now received from the symposium is deeply appreciated.”

FluidScan is currently offered by Spectro, Inc., a subsidiary of Foster-Miller that is also part of the QinetiQ North America Technology Solutions Group.

About QinetiQ North America

QinetiQ North America delivers world-class technology and responsive solutions to government agencies and commercial customers for many of their most urgent and complex challenges. QinetiQ North America is an independent, innovative technology provider that earns over a billion dollars in revenue operating with small company speed and agility while leveraging significant global resources. More than 6,000 QinetiQ North America engineers, scientists and other professionals have the mission knowledge and proven, reliable performance to meet the rapidly changing demands of national defense, homeland security and information assurance customers. 

About QinetiQ North America Technology Solutions Group

QinetiQ North America’s Technology Solutions Group, headquartered in Waltham, Mass., includes the businesses of Foster-Miller Inc., and its subsidiaries Planning Systems Incorporated, Automatika, Applied Perception, Spectro Inc., and the research and development activities of Apogen Technologies Inc. It is a technology and product development group with an international reputation for delivering innovative products and systems that perform under the most demanding conditions.