Trick and treat

Last month, we shared some of the results from our online reader survey of Plant Engineering Online (www.plantengineering. com).

By Len O'Neal March 1, 2000

Last month, we shared some of the results from our online reader survey of Plant Engineering Online (www.plantengineering. com). This month, we introduce you to some results of those results — an improvement we’ve implemented in response to your suggestions.

Tips & Tricks, on steroids

Lets face it, many of you who spend time on Plant Engineering Online have likely searched for an old maintenance tip or trick, only to become frustrated when browsing through the different issues because you could not remember in which issue you saw the tip. And searching our entire 5-year archive left you with an endless list of results, which likely yielded the specific result you were hoping to see, but your patience only got you through two of the five “Next 20 hits” links.

Enter the beauty of the web. One of the valuable capabilities of web publishing is that it allows you to present most, if not all, types of content in ways that help readers more easily access said content. For example, if you have a wealth of content that contains similar characteristics or components, yet is scattered among various types of media and/or locations within those media, the web offers the flexibility to pull such content into a single repository that can be easily browsed or that can provide readers with more meaningful and accessible search results.

By now, you can probably see where this is going. If it wasn’t you, many of your plant engineering colleagues have been vocal about an easier means for locating that needle-in-a-haystack maintenance tip. I’d be lying if I said we hadn’t thought about it earlier; lets just say the voices came through a bit louder and clearer when we conducted the last online reader survey.

So let’s just skip the drum roll and get to the point: We have compiled our years and years of Simple Solutions and Maintenance Tips and Tricks , including the 1999 winners that you can read about on p 112 of this issue, into a single database that you can now search online, separate from any other magazine or web exclusive content.

Look for access to this new functionality on the Plant Engineering Online home page, within the “Resources” section, and on the “Maintenance” channel page. As with any piece of content or functionality on Plant Engineering Online , your feedback is always welcome.

The show must go on

As I mentioned above, we received many comments and suggestions during our online survey for ways to improve Plant Engineering Online . With most surveys, results from open-ended questions do tend to provide more bang for the buck. That’s why we suggest that if you are in town for this month’s National Plant Engineering and Management Show, please stop by the Plant Engineering booth (#7511) and share your thoughts and ideas for making Plant Engineering Online a better resource for you.