Belt and braces - the Merridale® story

Although technically we are marking the 20th Anniversary of MIS Fuel Monitoring Limited, our collective experience goes back to 1985 and a company called Springfield Controls Ltd, an earlier pioneer in the development of commercial fuel management systems. I was involved in software development and John Russell, who is now Merridale's Technical Director, was employed as a service engineer.

Springfield Controls folded in 1986, and John Russell and a partner set up a business called Merridale Industrial Services (MIS) – a name derived from an historic area in Wolverhampton. Under this new arrangement, John continued to support Springfield’s existing customer base, as well as continuing to sell systems to new customers.

After a period spent as a contract programmer, I became self employed as a "Systems Design Consultant", doing freelance electronics and software development. During this period however, I continued my involvement with the Springfield legacy by providing software support for the systems that were then being supplied by MIS.

Having acquired considerable experience with both the equipment and the customers’ operational requirements, John was becoming increasingly frustrated with seeing tenders that specified functionality that was beyond the capability of the existing systems. Inevitably he started talking to me about the possibilities of creating a new system.

We wanted to make and sell the equipment, not constantly have to deal with service issues.

Enabling technology was moving at a fast pace and we both recognised the potential benefits for a new approach based on the Windows operating system. Eventually we thrashed out a design for a new fuel management system that we felt could easily compete with those that were currently on the market and would provide everything that potential customers wanted.

The Merridale Brand
I spent several months working on the design of what was to become the first Merridale Auditor system. The company MIS Fuel Monitoring Ltd was formed specifically to launch these new systems. We knew it was important to build a strong brand that people could remember and that we could be proud of, so right from the outset, we went to some lengths to ensure that the Merridale brand name went everywhere - on all the products, all the literature, and all the advertising - always displayed as prominently as possible.

But the brand name is no good without the products to associate it with. From the very start I was determined to design something that was, above all, reliable - I believe that is crucial to developing a successful product. I incorporated belt-and-braces design techniques to prevent against data loss in electrically noisy environments. I devised custom data partitioning, memory management and data processing schemes incorporating a variety of data redundancy and fault tolerant techniques. After all, we were, and still are, a small company and have never wanted, nor had the resources, to become a large service organisation. We wanted to make and sell the equipment, not constantly have to deal with service issues.

Too Reliable
Indeed we've even been criticised in the past for building equipment that is "too reliable". Service organisations have found it difficult staying in touch and up-to-date with equipment that they rarely see because it hardly ever goes wrong. And the used equipment suppliers have been frustrated by the lack of old systems coming back on the market for refurbishing and reselling.

The technology has changed significantly over the last 20 years. We released the very first Windows version of Merridale FuelFX the year after we started, in 1995. At that time not many of our customers even owned a PC - and if they did, they certainly weren't a luxury afforded to the average transport manager. So we also had to produce "office units" - remote fuel management systems that could be located in the relative comfort of the transport manager's office - for those who wanted something ‘indoors’. Communications with remote sites was achieved using a modem operating over a telephone line.

Incremental Benefits
As development progressed, things like network communications, GSM and GPRS, and the internet came into play. More recently we have developed web-based software, real-time data transfer and vehicle transponders. These, as with all the changes and improvements we have implemented over the last 20 years, are all step changes giving incremental benefits, as opposed to the generational differences or huge leaps forward that some might claim. The trick to maintaining a successful product, however, is in the design and implementation of these step changes and in providing some degree of backward compatibility.

Customers' general operational requirements have changed very little over the last 20 years, but their expectations have increased markedly. They expect equipment to monitor both the fuel they dispense and the fuel in their storage tanks. They expect software to reconcile the two, and to give them current and up-to-date consumption, accounting and performance information, from all of their depots, in real time. And they want the information available wherever and whenever they need it. And this is what Merridale provides.

My design philosophy is simple: Strive for perfection. Software and hardware must be "right", not just work. And standards are important and must always be maintained.

Flexibility is the key to servicing as many customers' needs as possible. Standardisation is the key to efficient and cost-effective production. Between these two points is the design, and that's my job. Features need to be added to software and hardware in such a way that they are modular and backwardly compatible. "We don't do 'specials'" has been one of my mantras from day one. Instead we incorporate the features that customers want in such a way that they are configurable and can give maximum benefit to those who have use of them and can be unobtrusive to the rest, and in such a way that nothing is made obsolete. Nothing is ‘special' - everything is standard.

My design philosophy is simple: Strive for perfection. Software and hardware must be "right", not just work. And standards are important and must always be maintained.