MANKATO, Minn. /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Winland Electronics, Inc., announced a product enhancement program to address interference issues with its EnviroAlert EA200 and EA400 products. EnviroAlert monitors temperature, humidity, and water in critical environments and activates alarms, dialers, or transmitters when programmed limits have been exceeded.
The company has recently identified interference issues with some installations of its EnviroAlert EA200 and EA400 that could affect temperature and humidity readings and cause some units in the most extreme cases to lock up and become nonfunctional. The problem is highly unusual but can occur in installations where there are high levels of radio frequency interference or stray transient voltages present. The company has modified the product circuit board to enhance the rejection of this type of interference and enable the product to exceed the normal U.S. standards as well as the more stringent CE European rejection standards.
Winland has begun to notify distributors and dealers about the issue. The company will
- Replace any existing new product inventory held by distributors or dealers with units, including the updated circuit board
- Provide updated circuit boards to dealers at no cost until September 30, 2006, as well as an incentive to dealers to install the updated circuit board in products in the field.
Lorin Krueger, Winland's chief executive officer, commented, "Our goal is to provide our customers, dealers, and distributors with the highest level of product performance and reliability available. To date the company has received reported incidents of less then 2% of the total number of units sold experiencing these types of issues. However this is not up to the level of performance we wish to have in our critical environment sensors. "
The company estimates that the gross cost of the program could be approximately $480,000, which will be incurred in the second quarter of 2006. This estimate assumes that 75% of the units in the field are returned for replacement or refitted with a new circuit board. The costs incurred by the company may be more or less than the estimated amount depending on the response. After applying reserves for obsolete inventory and warranty and appropriate adjustments to compensation accruals against a portion of this cost, the company estimates that the program is likely to reduce second quarter net income by approximately $167,000. For more information, go to the company's Web site.