2006 Readers' Choice Survey

The equipment, services and suppliers you choose to use to make your job easier also greatly contribute to your on-the-job success. Selecting the correct tools for the job requires a lot of thought.

What thought process do you use when making those myriad of choices? Is it the product best suited for a particular task? Perhaps it is the most economical choice? Maybe even the reputation of the vendor? Or is it what competitors and peers choose to use?

“We buy what fits the process the best for the best price and quality. We buy elastomers from maybe 40 sources; the same with analyzers, pumps, and other equipment,” explains one survey respondent. “We have corporate contracts with major suppliers.”

A chemical plant depends upon a wide range of tools — software, hardware and services. A key role of engineers is to think about how to effectively put the right tools together, so they work in harmony and optimize the operation of the plant.. It is an ongoing activity that requires constant and careful consideration. One respondent seems to sum up the point of our survey best: “With the internet available, it is easy to find suppliers/manufacturers for a particular product or device. However, it helps to have name recognition as this survey demonstrates. Good survey. It was quite useful to me. It showed how little I know by way of manufacturers and rely heavily on the internet.”

To find out which technology providers our readers think are best, for the third consecutive year, Chemical Processing has conducted its Readers Choice survey. Drawing on the respondents’ experience can hopefully help make your choices easier. This year’s results provide updated listings for a wide variety of products and services used at chemical plants throughout the world. We hope that the results are of value and interest.

Number crunching

Readers received e-mail notices and electronic newsletters or used the link on our Web site to complete the extensive questionnaire. The survey was open for responses for approximately one month. A total of 285 readers took the time to share their opinions about which vendors they prefer in 46 different categories. This is a slight increase over last year’s 276 respondents. The categories were listed, but respondents had to type their selections in a blank text box instead of picking from a pre-selected list of companies in each category. By not restricting input, we eliminated a potential source of bias to the survey. It did make our job harder, though, since we had to tie together various brand and defunct company names with current vendors.

The rankings show the percentage of the total responses in that category that a particular company received; we list only vendors that garnered at least 5% of the votes in a category. Scores within 3% of each other should be considered as statistical ties.

Emerson Process Management, for the second year, placed first in seven categories, and scored highly in several others, as well. Siemens and Alfa Laval are the only other multiple category winners, with two first place finishes each.

If you didn’t participate in our survey this year, we hope that you will consider doing so next year.

And the winner is …

Fred Foster, senior scientist, at BASi CRU, and a resident of Shrewsbury, Pa. is the recipient of the 30-GB video iPod offered as an incentive for our respondents to participate in the Readers Choice survey. His name was randomly selected by computer from all of the respondents.