The A-pac Gamble

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Necessity lurks behind Action Instruments Inc.'s move toward industrial computers. As the pace of computerization in manufacturing and processing plants picks up, Action, like other electronic-instrument makers, faces the prospect of either joining the rush toward computers or being left behind with ever-decreasing markets.

"Jim Pinto's making a gutsy move, but it's one he has to make. They have to move because their niches will disappear on them," explains Jim Miller, for 16 years a pioneer in systems sales with The Foxboro Co. and now president of Econics Inc. and a member of Action's board of directors. "Digital technology will replace so much that the company has probably gotten as much with the Action Pak as it's going to get."

Once regarded as a state-of-the-art product, the Action Pak now serves one of the least-promising sectors of the burgeoning process-control market. Over the next decade, according to Frost & Sullivan, analog measurement and control instruments' share of the industrial-process-and-control market will drop considerably, while digital controllers will increase their share.

The $10-billion industrial process control market is undergoing dramatic changes. Increasingly powerful microcomputers, including personal computers costing less than $5,000, are invading the industrial workplace and performing tasks once thought the realm of the larger machines. Industrial/scientific applications, for instance, now account for as much as 10% of all Apple computers in use, a figure expected to increase to 22% in the next few years, according to company officials. Other personal computers, including the Compaq, the IBM Personal Computer, the Kaypro, and the TRS-80, are currently performing such tasks as the operation of automated welders, programming robots, and even the complete automation of an asphalt plant.

Aimed at this expanding market, Action's new, $5,000 A-Pac computer, introduced in October, will run headlong into increasing competition from personal computers, add-on "black boxes," and products from former component makers, such as Analog Devices Inc. Already, Analog Devices's $10,000-range computerized measurement and control system has racked up $10 million in annual sales, and company president Ray Stata plans to hurry Analog's own $5,000, industrially oriented, single-board computer to market.

"We are witnessing the birth of what will be a very crowded and segmented market," claims Stata. "It will be very tolerant to many producers. Everybody will be seeing different needs. And the technologies are changing so bloody fast it won't be possible for an IBM or HP to dominate it. This will be a very heterogenous industry.

The key problem facing Action and other new industrial computer makers may well be a cultural one. Many veteran engineers, uncomfortable with computers, may prove unwilling to learn even the simplest program languages.

"The people in these industries are still technological Neanderthals," insists venture capitalist Don Valentine. "They are several technologies behind. You have to address the problem and deliver the solution in language they understand."

To appeal to these "Neanderthals," Action's new A-Pac computer has been designed with the traditional instrumentation engineer in mind. Like the Action Pak, A-Pacs will be packaged to be tough -- some will even be available with steel castings -- and will come with all the hook-on features necessary for process-control functions. Based on an updated model of the basic controller purchased from Dynabyte Corp. in 1981, the A-Pac comes with a simple, easy-to-use language known as ABLE (Action Basic Language Enhancement), designed specifically to facilitate its use for process-control purposes by even the most computer-illiterate operatives.

"We're going to make it bulletproof for a factory, and it will have software that's written for understanding," explains Action President James J. Pinto, who has poured nearly million into the A-Pac project. And unlike the other people in the field, we come from an instrumentation background. We know what we're doing. That's our black magic and our special sauce."

Action's strong ties to instrumentation customers, Pinto believes, will provide the fulcrum with which Action can pry open orders for the new A-Pac. Marketing manager Chuck Philyaw, who plans to sell some 100 A-Pacs a month in 1984, will target his sales force on established Action Pak customers.

"Our customer is 45, he's got a potbelly, and his fingers are bigger than our thumbs," Philyaw, 34, asserts. "He likes big heavy things, stuff you can thump on. He's not going to go for some Mickey Mouse personal computer, but he might just listen to the folks who brought him the Action Pak."