• 2006 — www.ChemicalProcessing.com/articles/2006/111.html
• 2005 — www.ChemicalProcessing.com/articles/2005/523.html
• 2004 — www.ChemicalProcessing.com/articles/2005/363.html

Crunching the Numbers
Readers received e-mail notices, electronic newsletters, used a link posted on www.ChemicalProcessing.com or responded to Twitter and Facebook postings to complete the questionnaire. A total of exactly 1,000 readers cast their votes about which vendors they consider technology leaders in 47 different categories. Categories were listed, but respondents had to enter the name of the technology provider in a blank text box. By not providing a pre-selected list of companies in each category, the survey avoided bias.

The rankings show the percentage of total responses in each category that a particular company received. We only list firms that acquire at least 5% of the votes in a category. Scores within 3% of each other should be considered a statistical tie.

Congratulations to…
Randy Rutledge is the recipient of the 8GB iPod Touch, which was offered as an incentive to participate in the Readers' Choice Awards survey. His name was randomly selected by computer from all of the respondents.

Categories and Percentage of Votes

Alarm Management Software 
Honeywell (Matrikon) 26%
Emerson 16%
PAS 10%
Yokogawa  7 %
  
Bearings
SKF 51%
Timken 11%

Boilers/Steam Systems  
Cleaver Brooks 14%
Babcock & Wilcox 11%
Thermax 8%
Spirax Sarco 5% 
  
Catalysts  
BASF (Engelhard) 13%
Johnson Matthey 12%
Honeywell (UOP) 11%
Haldor Topsoe 6%
Criterion 5% 
 
Centrifugal Pumps  
ITT (Goulds) 31%
Flowserve 12%
Sulzer 7%
KSB 5%
 
Centrifuges  
Alfa Laval 21%
GEA Westfalia 12%
Andritz Bird 7%
Beckman 5%
 
Compressors  
Ingersol Rand 32%
Atlas Copco 18%

Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS)  
SAP 25%
Maximo 19%
  
Condition Monitoring  
GE (Bently Nevada) 27%
Emerson Process Management 16%
Rockwell Automation 8%
 
Conveying (Mechanical)  
Flexicon 9%
Hapman 8%
  
Conveying (Pneumatic)  
MAC Equipment 11%
Dynamic Air 8%
Vac-U-Max 8% 

Cooling Towers   
SPX (Marley) 36%
Paharpur 11%
Baltimore Aircoil 10%
 
Distillation Equipment  
Koch-Glitsch 28%
Sulzer 24%

Dryers  
GEA Niro 12%
 
Dust-Control Systems  
Donaldson Torit 22%
 
Explosion Protection Systems  
Fike 26%
Fenwall 15%

Fans & Blowers  
New York Blower 15%
Howden Buffalo 10%
Dresser Roots 8% 
Chicago Blower 6%

Feeders  
K-Tron 28%
Schenck Accurate 16%
Acrison 9%
Siemens 5%
  
Filtration Systems  
Pall 14%
Millipore 7%
Siemens 6%
 
Flow Instrumentation  
Emerson Process Management 51%