In the past, utility personnel didn’t want the public to have to think much about sewer and water treatment plants. The idea was to build the public’s trust that tap water was safe and reliable and wastewater was treated properly.

Today, however, as municipalities struggle to find funds to maintain and upgrade these essential services, many feel a public awareness campaign may be in order.

Some analysts consider the valve market a hard one to track because there are so many players in the field and the business cycles are so long term.

Although this year’s Market Outlook had its share of gloomy news regarding international economic woes, a bright spot in many of the speakers’ comments was India. That country, which did not have nearly the magnitude of problems during the Great Recession as the rest of the world, has seen consistently large year-over-year gains in the last decade and a half as it has learned to deal with the major economic reforms that began in the early 1990s.

David Dunbar, President of Valves & Controls, Tyco Flow Control, describes the valve industry using the phrase “stubborn complexity.”

Dunbar, who presented some of his views on where the industry is headed at the Valve World conference last November, explains what he means by that phrase.