Manufacturing Innovator Leonard Moore Dies

Leonard Moore, founder of a San Fernando Valley manufacturer of instruments for industrial process automation, died on Sept. 6. He was 85. Moore started Moore Industries-International Inc. in 1968 in an industrial area of North Hills. The company remains in the area, spread across two buildings near Van Nuys Airport. A native of Iowa, Moore graduated from Iowa State University in 1953 with a degree in electrical engineering. Afterward, he was in the U.S. Army where he learned that he had a passion for instruments and control circuits after teaching soldiers how to operate, calibrate and repair various guidance and artillery weapon systems. Moore Industries makes 168 products that monitor all the steps a raw ingredient goes through at a processing plant or manufacturing facility to become a final product, whether it’s gasoline or a medicine pill. The monitors check on temperature, pressure and other functions of a manufacturing process and feed data to a central control system. “The best compliment we can get from our customers is that they forgot about our products or solutions because they performed so well that they just plain forgot they were ever installed,” Moore was quoted as saying, according to a company release. Moore is survived by his longtime companion Christine Hulfish, threes sons and four grandchildren.