Award Recognizes Technology’s Impact on Manufacturing Economics
January 3, 2008 Control Station announced today that the Company’s LOOP-PRO Product Suite received the 2007 Vaaler Award. Chosen by a panel of industry experts and bestowed by Chemical Processing Magazine, the award recognized LOOP-PRO for dramatically improving the operation and economics of chemical manufacturing.
Domestic chemical manufacturers struggle to compete in the face of rising production costs, growing environmental regulation and ever increasing global competition. In 2007 the National Association of Manufacturers reported 3.1 million lost American jobs over a five year period, due largely to rising energy costs alone.
Chemical and other industries rely heavily on proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control systems to automate continuous production processes. Maintaining performance of PID controllers is essential to effective and cost-efficient manufacturing. Underperforming PID controllers can artificially inflate energy consumption by 5% to 10% and increase production defects by as much as 50%. The LOOP-PRO Product Suite utilizes an intuitive procedure to accurately evaluate process data and avoid these costs.
This award offers further proof of Control Station’s ability to deliver value and to meaningfully impact plant profitability, shared Dennis Nash, the Company’s President and CEO. We continue to develop technologies that enable everyday production staff to perform like PhDs. By helping those on the plant floor to make better informed decisions, LOOP-PRO makes their job easier and their plant more profitable.
LOOP-PRO follows a 5-step procedure to tune PID controllers and equips users with advanced analysis tools. By graphically comparing the performance of proposed versus existing tuning parameters, LOOP-PRO shows potential improvements in terms of overall performance as well as process stability. Simulated graphics are complemented by an array of key process indicators such as Settling Time and Percent Overshoot to further facilitate analysis.
Our product development engineers regularly work the plant floor and understand the challenges facing today’s production staff, commented Dr. Bob Rice, Control Station’s Director of Solutions Engineering. We integrate those plant floor insights into our product innovation processes to assure that each product enhancement solves real-world application requirements.
The user community has also recognized LOOP-PRO for its value as a process optimization technology. In April 2007 the readers of Control Engineering Magazine recognized LOOP-PRO with the Engineers Choice Award for Advanced Process Control. Control Station continues to invest in the advancement of the product suite and the simplification of complex process control tasks.
LOOP-PRO is used by leading manufacturers in the Chemicals and other process industries, including ArcelorMittal, General Motors, Holcim (US), Honeywell Specialty Materials, Miller Brewing, and Solvay.
About the Vaaler Award
Every other year since 1964, Chemical Processing Magazine has bestowed the Vaaler Award on products and services that have dramatically improved the operations and economics of plants in the chemical industry. Chemical Processing’s Editorial Board, which consists of technical professionals with diverse responsibilities and from a variety of industry sectors, judged the entries. The impartial panel evaluated all nominees for technological significance, novelty or uniqueness, and breadth of application.
