Qualitrol is a
condition monitoring technology company headquartered in
Fairport, New York. Qualitrol manufacturers and distributes partial discharge monitoring, asset protection equipment and information products for the electrical generation, transmission and distribution industries.
The company also offers customer training and field services, such as on-site start-up and testing, customized maintenance, product upgrades, troubleshooting, and repair services. It serves customers in Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and North America.
Qualitrol is a subsidiary of the
Fortive industrial conglomerate.
History
George Ford
George Ford, the founder of Qualitrol, was born in 1907 in
Barrie, Ontario, Canada, the son of Thomas Henry Ford and Rachel Mary Jones. His family moved to
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...
when he was a child, where he completed his secondary education and then graduated as an engineer from the
University of Rochester.
Ford became aware of a major deficiency in the manufacture of heavy electronic transformers and generators of diesel engines. He identified the risks of unexpected accidents while using gas and flame without protective devices. At the age of 38, Ford left his position as Vice President of Engineering at the Rochester Manufacturing Company to establish a new company
using seed money from his brother-in-law, Mort Watters, and from his mother-in-law, Rose Gavin.
Founding and expansion
In 1945 Ford founded Qualitrol Corporation in
Fairport, New York, and began to provide the electric utility industry with protective devices and monitoring systems. Ford opened a branch of Qualitrol in
Waynesboro, Tennessee to manufacture valves. Later, Mr. Ford bought Microcontrol in
St. Louis, Missouri, a manufacturer of thermostats, and the
Dynapar Corporation
in
Gurney, Illinois a manufacturer of digital controls.
In the late 1960s, Ford sold all of his business interests to devote more time to his love of sports.
Acquisition by Danaher
Within two years of Danaher Corporation's founding in 1984, it acquired twelve companies as part of a strategy to enter
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the
secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...
. In 1986,
Danaher Corporation acquired Qualitrol, establishing Qualitrol
LLC.
Qualitrol became part of Danaher's
instrumentation
Instrumentation is a collective term for measuring instruments, used for indicating, measuring, and recording physical quantities. It is also a field of study about the art and science about making measurement instruments, involving the related ...
unit, which included
Gilbarco Veeder-Root's underground fuel storage sensors, Dynapar's motion sensors,
and Qualitrol's
pressure
Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and eve ...
and
temperature
Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...
measurement instruments used on the electrical transformer industry.
Danaher spun off several subsidiaries, including Qualitrol, in 2016 to create Fortive.
Acquisition by Fortive
Qualitrol became part of
Fortive in July, 2016.
Corporate affairs
At the end of 2007, Qualitrol started to collaborate with
Quebec City
Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...
-based Neoptix Inc., a manufacturer of fiber optic temperature sensors.
Initially, Qualitrol and Neoptix worked together on the integration of data collected simultaneously from traditional methods of temperature measurement and from optical direct hot-spot sensors.
Subsequently, Neoptix became a sole subsidiary of Qualitrol.
In 2010, Qualitrol acquired
Mississauga, Ontario-based Iris Power, a supplier of on-line
partial discharge testing of stator winding insulation in large motors and generators, from subsidiaries of
Koch Chemical Technology Group, LLC, a
Wichita-based multinational. Qualitrol thereby acquired a fleet of portable and continuous instruments and monitoring systems that are integrated into a power plant's
Distributed Control System (DCS) or a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (
SCADA) system.

At the end of 2011, Qualitrol began the expansion of its current production facility in
Fairport, New York to .
Subsidiaries
*Qualitrol
**Iris Power LP
**Neoptix Fiber Optics LP
**BPL Global (Serveron)
Divisions
*
Asset Protection
*
Transmission and
Distribution
*
Condition monitoring for
Transmission and
Distribution
*
Condition monitoring for
Generation
*
Services
Products
Asset protection
*
Temperature Measurement Devices
*
Pressure Controls,
Gauges, and
Relays
*
Transformer Monitors
*
Liquid Level
*
Flow
*
Gas
*Breaker Monitors,
SF6 Controls and
Gauges
Transmission and distribution
*
Fault Recording and Fault Location
*
Power Quality Monitoring
*
Sequential Events Recording and
Alarm Annunciation
*
Multifunction Software
Condition monitoring
*
Transformer Monitors
*Breaker Monitors,
SF6 Controls and
Gauges
*
Partial Discharge
*
Cable Monitoring
Global operations
Qualitrol also has manufacturing facilities in
Belfast
Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...
, and
Mississauga. The Belfast facility focuses on Qualitrol instruments and the Glasgow facility is now defunct and dissolved, merged with Belfast. The Quebec City unit operates as Neoptix
and the Mississauga unit operates under Iris Power.
Though each location specializes, projects are worked on by teams in multiple locations.
Qualitrol adheres to the standards of international organizations, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (
IEEE-SA)
and the International Council on Large Electric Systems (
CIGRE).
Offices
References
External links
Qualitrol LLC
{{Fortive
Technology companies established in 1945
Electronics companies of the United States
Engineering companies of the United States
Manufacturing companies based in New York (state)
Companies based in Monroe County, New York
Electronic test equipment manufacturers
1945 establishments in New York (state)
1986 mergers and acquisitions