EC: PlantTriage v11.0
Software - Diagnostics: PlantTriage diagnoses process and control issues, prioritizes them, and provides the tools to resolve the issues immediately. This is a Control Engineering 2013 Engineers' Choice Award winner.
Control Engineering
PlantTriage version 11 has added built-in tools to help users resolve issues quickly. The software, now in its 10th year of production, has always provided on-line monitoring and analysis of process and control information. Now it adds more capability to immediately solve in-plant problems.
First, PlantTriage has added "Drag and Drop Tuning." This feature, included in the thin-client web browser, allows users to tune control loops from almost any form of bump test. This is especially useful, because bump tests don't always go as planned. Users often struggle to produce a clean step or pulse test. Drag and Drop Tuning works with open-loop and closed-loop tests.
Second, PlantTriage now has a fully-integrated system to manage follow-up corrective actions. The Action Ticket system lets users assign and track corrective actions, such as instrument calibrations, valve repairs, and loop tuning. The system has an integrated reporting system that provides automated emails. Expanding on ExperTune's long history of making it easy to tune even complex systems, PlantTriage now supports single-bump cascade tuning. This means that both inner and outer loops of a cascade scheme can be tuned with a single bump test. This greatly simplifies the tuning process, and makes it accessible to those with limited knowledge of cascades.
Many additional features expand PlantTriage's underlying capabilities to make it easier to solve problems quickly. This includes extended trending features, additional dashboarding capability, and the ability to analyze long-term interactions within or between plants.
ExperTune Inc.
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2012 Salary Survey
In a year when manufacturing continued to lead the economic rebound, it makes sense that plant manager bonuses rebounded. Plant Engineering’s annual Salary Survey shows both wages and bonuses rose in 2012 after a retreat the year before.
Average salary across all job titles for plant floor management rose 3.5% to $95,446, and bonus compensation jumped to $15,162, a 4.2% increase from the 2010 level and double the 2011 total, which showed a sharp drop in bonus.