What Is PlantTriage?
PlantTriage® is a plant-wide Performance Supervision System.
It monitors your plant 24 hours a day, pinpointing opportunities for
performance improvement.
Using your existing control system as a window to the process,
PlantTriage® monitors:
- Instrumentation
- Controllers
- Equipment
Results are tracked, trended, and ranked by economic importance.
PlantTriage
® displays all of the information in
easy-to-understand web-based graphics.
Plant Floor to
Boardroom Strategy
Saves Columbian Chemicals $1 million a Year.
InTech Magazine, July 2006
How Does PlantTriage Help My Plant?
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PlantTriage® discovers, and prioritizes, the most important opportunities to
improve the process. Because PlantTriage® is watching your entire plant, 24
hours a day, it can see many opportunities to:
- Reduce Operating Expenses
- Shift the Process Toward Optimum
- Improve Process Stability
- Reduce Unplanned Shutdowns
- Reduce Capital Costs
- Identify Process Constraints
- Focus Maintenance Efforts on the Most Important Issues
- Focus Improvement Spending
Power, Useability Refine Plant Performance
Product Review in CONTROL, May 2006
Request A PlantTriage Demo CD
See a List of Benefits
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How Does PlantTriage Work?
PlantTriage® connects to your existing control system, and
extracts information about process operations, equipment, and
controls. PlantTriage® then ranks this information for technical and
economic importance.
With intuitive graphic displays, and
context-sensitive drill-down,
you are led directly to performance improvement opportunities in your
plant. With fully integrated diagnostic tools, you can find and
resolve problems directly from your desktop.
PlantTriage® identifies the areas in your plant where the greatest
economic gains are possible. PlantTriage® is designed to help you
make the most impact in your plant. It pinpoints areas to work on
that will yield the greatest economic return. PlantTriage® pinpoints
sub-optimal unit operations and loops. PlantTriage® helps you
diagnose, optimize and tune those loops.
Bottom-Line Results
A typical installation of PlantTriage® results in:
- Energy Savings can run from 0.5% to over 2% of
annual energy spending.
- 200% to 300% increase in the productivity of
maintenance and engineering people, since they are hitting the loops
that make the most difference. PlantTriage® Biggest Payback Loops
identifies areas to work on that yield the greatest economic
return.
- 5% increase in service factor (up time) of supervisory
applications. APC or DMC for example.
- Setpoints 3% to 5% closer to specifications
because of reduced variation in the regulatory system.
- 50% reduction in valve maintenance budget.
Typical installation of PlantTriage® results in total valve travel
reduced by a factor of 5.
- PlantTriage® includes fully integrated PID
Loop Optimization tools to diagnose, tune, linearize and
decouple the problems found. These tools increase the
effectiveness of maintenance and engineering personnel by
a factor of 5 to 10. They can do the job quickly and systematically,
optimizing the process with award–winning tools.
- PlantTriage® includes performance tracking to see how the health of
the entire plant, unit operations, or loops has changed over time.
This is the control aspect of Six
Sigma.
Request A PlantTriage Demo CD
PlantTriage 7.0 – The Best Just Got Better!
With more power, improved graphics, and incredible drill-down capability, PlantTriage 7.0
helps to improve your plant faster than ever.
Learn More about PlantTriage 7.0
Reduce Energy Spending
Using PlantTriage's powerful graphics, you will quickly pinpoint energy
savings opportunities. For example, Opportunity Gap helps to push the
operation closer to its most profitable point of operation.
View a short
presentation on reducing energy costs
Increase Production Rate
What is keeping you from producing more? PlantTriage® identifies the
constraints in your process. Reduce scrap and waste, and open up the
bottlenecks. With visualization tools like the Plant Performance TreeMap, you will be
able to spot the bottlenecks at a glance.
Many people are surprised to find that they can increase production with just
a few simple changes. Let PlantTriage® show you which changes to make.
Improve Product Quality
Reduce variability, and you will improve quality. PlantTriage®
is built on the foundation of ExperTune's award-winning PID Loop Optimization tools. With 20
years of proven results, these tools have a direct and measurable impact on
product quality.
Find out more about PID Loop Optimization Tools
Stabilize the Plant
When you start applying PlantTriage®, you will see the plant
stabilize. There will be less variation, fewer alarms, less confusion, and
more focus on the bottom line. This stability has results that are directly
measurable in dollars and cents, and other results that are harder to
quantify, like your peace of mind.
According to Furnace Operator Rowdy Boudreaux,
"Things run a lot smoother. It makes my job a lot easier."
Focus Maintenance Efforts
According to one study, half of all maintenance work in process plants is not
needed, and 10% is actually harmful. PlantTriage® has the tools to focus your
efforts on the right parts of the process. One refinery saved $75,000
in a shutdown, simply by focusing on the repair and replacement of the right
control valves.
More information about how to simplify Maintenance Work
Optimize the Process
In the end, the real focus is optimizing the process. This includes the
equipment, the operation, and the controls. Process Engineers can finally get
an understanding of Process Interactions with Process Interaction Mapping.
Your competitors are using these tools. Shouldn't you?
Latest Updates in PlantTriage
"There is always an excuse for not looking into novel
techniques and new ideas reported by manufacturers, because the
skeptical user assumes they are just trying to sell their latest
expensive gimmick, and it 'will never work on this plant'. The
pressure mounts as application stories from plants and industries
similar to yours are published: ... But when the Government starts
funding organisations like PICME to provide free advice on lean
manufacturing, and how to plan manufacturing improvement in
supporting a sustainable chemical and process sector, then it is a
sure signal you should find time to look into it a bit harder ...
Control loop assessment and performance
diagnosis: after so many manufacturers talking about this
(admittedly mostly in very abstract terms) maybe you could listen
and believe the IEE? The application stories about phenomenal cost
savings are out there, in the industry: from personal experience
there are amazing savings being made, improving existing plant
performance, improving profitability in a way that is saving
industries from extinction. But surprisingly few of these stories
are published - suddenly the management of the plants making these
savings do not give permission for publication: maybe for fear of
criticism from their shareholders about why they had waited so long
before using the technology! So listen more carefully: maybe you
will hear the stories 'behind' the official news." Nick Denbow,
Editor, Processing Talk, 29 March, 2005.
The broad definition of triage from Webster's dictionary:
Main Entry: tri·age
Pronunciation:
trE-'äzh, 'trE-"
Function: noun
Definition:
broadly : the assigning of priority order to
projects on the basis of where funds and resources can be best used or
are most needed.
PlantTriage is a registered trademark of ExperTune Inc.