Readers' Choice Awards: Who’s a Big Hit with Readers?

Technology provider all-stars in 45 categories were selected by the readers of Chemical Processing in the 2008 Readers’ Choice Awards survey. In its fifth year, the survey results show which providers are big hits with our readers.

Like baseball fans, our readers told us who their favorite technology players are by voting for them online. Based on their comments, the readers are big fans of the survey.

"Your categories are very thorough,” says one reader. The survey is “good and useful,” comments another. We hope this year’s list of all-stars helps your team in the working world feel like a winner in selecting technology providers.

Vendors pay close attention in scouting the survey results like box scores to know if their batting averages with the end users are amongst the league leaders. Those that make the cut to be included on the list do feel like all-stars because it means they gained a solid following of fans who consider them to be technology leaders. The others with lower batting averages might be motivated to keep a keener eye on the ball to enhance their products so that they can gain mention next season.

Heavy hitters
As in past surveys, Emerson Process Management has maintained it’s dominance, and is the MVP of the league for placing first in nine categories and placing in seven others. Other league leaders who garnered multiple mentions include ABB, Alfa Laval, Aspen Technology, Dow, Endress+Hauser, Fluke, Honeywell and Siemens.

If you weren’t a player in this year’s survey, we hope you’ll consider getting on the field next season. More detailed survey results are provided on the subsequent pages. If you desire more information about any of the vendors or products listed, we encourage you to visit www.ChemicalProcessing.com and search for bearings, pumps or any other category you are interested in.

Readers received e-mail notices and electronic newsletters or used a link posted on www.ChemicalProcessing.com to access the questionnaire. The survey was open for responses for just over one month. A total of 316 readers cast their votes about which vendors they prefer in 45 different categories. Categories were listed, but respondents had to make their own selections by typing the name of the technology provider in each blank text box. By not providing a pre-selected list of companies in each category, we avoided bias in the survey. This also meant that respondents were free to use as broad a definition of a category as they wanted. Methodology

The rankings show the percentage of total responses in each category that a particular company received. A minimum of at least 5% of the votes in a category is required to be listed. Scores within 3% of each other should be considered a statistical tie.

Batter up...

Bearings
SKF 51%
Timkin  14%

Boilers/Steam Systems
Babcock & Wilcox 20%
Cleaver Brooks 12%
Thermax 7%

Catalysts
BASF (Englehard) 13%
UOP 9%
Degussa  6%
Sudchemie 5%

Centrifugal Pumps
Goulds Pumps – ITT 37%
Flowserve 15%
KSB 7%

Centrifuges
Alfa Laval 17%
Westfalia 10%
Sharples  8%
Bird 6%

Compressors
Ingersoll-Rand  28%
Atlas Copco 15%

Computerized Maintenance Management Software
SAP 15%
Emerson Process Management 15%
Maximo 12%

Distillation Systems
Koch-Glitsch 31%
Sulzer 8%