About Flow Research
Flow Research is the only market research company whose primary mission is to research flowmeter, calibration, level device, and other process control instrumentation markets. Flow Research market research studies can be purchased by anyone interested in the topics. We create these studies through interviews with suppliers, distributors, and end-users. Topics include all of the flowmeter technologies – both new and conventional – as well as pressure transmitters; temperature sensors and transmitters, infrared thermometers and thermal imagers; analytical instrumentation; selected API-certified valves; and studies specifically focused on certain major markets for flowmeters such as the oil and gas markets. Flow Research also started a working group focusing on flowmeter calibration and has completed two studies on flowmeter calibration facilities.
Dr. Jesse Yoder, president, founded Flow Research Inc. in 1998. Dr. Yoder has more than 35 years of experience as a writer and analyst in process control and instrumentation beginning as president and founder of Idea Network. Since 1990, he has written more than 300 market research studies, most of them regarding flow and instrumentation, and more than 300 articles on flow and instrumentation for trade journals. He has also given numerous presentations at industry conferences and seminars and done webinars.
Dr. Yoder received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984. He worked as a market analyst for Frost & Sullivan, Find/SVP, Venture Development Corp., and Automation Research Corp. In addition to the years he has spent writing market studies, Dr. Yoder spent 10 years as a technical writer. Almost four years of this were spent writing technical manuals and training guides for the process control division of Siemens. In 1989, he co-founded the Interchange Technical Writing Conference, which he directed for six years. He also taught technical writing at the graduate level at Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dr. Yoder spent 10 years as an adjunct philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Lafayette College. He is president and founder of Idea Network.
Dr. Yoder has received two US patents, one in 2015 and one in 2017, for the flowtube meter, a new dual tube/dual sensor method of measuring flow. This meter has two prototypes built and has been tested at CEESI in Nunn, Colorado.
He has also written four books:
Shades of Experience, published in 2001, is a book on philosophy, experience and language. Some of its main purposes are to explain the philosophy of viewpoint pluralism, discuss how people can increase their understanding by becoming more aware of previously unnoticed differences in their experience, and examine some of the dynamics of language and ways it can be used as a more powerful descriptive tool. According to viewpoint pluralism, our knowledge of a subject or object increases as we take additional viewpoints of it. Viewpoint pluralism is a philosophy that underlies the research performed by Flow Research.
The Tao of Measurement, A Philosophical View of Flow and Sensors, with Richard E. Morley as co-contributor, was published in January of 2015 by the International Society of Automation (ISA). Topics covered include temperature, pressure, flow, time, length, and area. This book looks at the past, present and future of flow, sensors and measurement. It reveals underlying principles of flow, pressure, and temperature products, explains engineering practices, how our units of measurement were derived, present day measurement practices, and how today’s scientific tools can improve our units of measurement.
Dr. Yoder has also written a two-book set called Advances in Flowmeter Technology for CRC Press (Taylor & Francis Group) that discusses the history, operating principles, growth factors, representative companies, and frontiers of research for all 10 major types of flowmeters. The first volume is New-Technology Flowmeters and the second volume is Conventional Flowmeters, both published in 2023.
CRC Press is expected to publish Dr. Yoder’s latest book, Mass Flow Measurement, in 2025.