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  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: PlantTriage<sup>®</sup> makes sure your investment in capital keeps paying back.

  • 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?

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: PlantTriage<sup>®</sup> makes it easy to find the biggest opportunities.

  • 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

  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:

    Save money using PlantTriage<sup>®</sup>
  • 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.

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