evidence, a major chemical company analyzed its plant demographics and found one of its largest plants would lose 75 percent of its operating staff to retirement by the end of this decade.

Pursuing performance

Demand for value-added services has never been higher, as end-users strive to extract every last ounce of performance out of their plants in the face of constrained personnel resources and a wave of retiring engineers, ARC said. Demand has been particularly strong for outsourced maintenance and performance-related services such as loop monitoring.

Within the process industries, there is the potential to reduce energy consumption, raw material usage, and work force requirements in literally millions of installed control loops. In addition, these control loops form the foundation for safe and reliable operations. However, in a typical plant, more than half of all loops are actually increasing variability, thus negatively affecting quality, throughput, and return on automation (ROA). Even if a process were running at optimal economic conditions, performance deterioration occurs from numerous sources, such as changes in business strategies, modifications in operating conditions, and equipment wear.

ARC Advisory Group Inc.
www.arcweb.com

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