Honeywell has unveiled the process industry's first vendor-neutral process control suite, which allows plant operators to centrally monitor and control both Honeywell and non-Honeywell process control systems within their plants. The process control suite lets operators and management break out of the information silos that can often occur with Advanced Process Control (APC) systems.

Suitable for all industrial applications, the Honeywell Process Solutions' (HPS) suite revolutionises performance monitoring with its ability to span not only multiple APC technologies, but also multiple processing facilities, giving consistent performance benchmarking across the enterprise and ensuring proper corrective action is taken when and where necessary. HPS studies have shown the solution can increase service factor and application utilisation by 25% while reducing troubleshooting time by up to 50%, allowing proactive maintenance practices to improve utilisation and increase application service factors.

The suite includes three software products: Honeywell Loop Scout, which gives control engineers the ability to identify and correct poorly performing control loops; Honeywell Profit? Expert, delivering multivariable controller monitoring for Honeywell's Profit Controller; and Control Performance Monitor, an application that monitors, identifies, diagnoses and remedies regulatory and APC asset issues throughout the plant.

"This new software suite is a first in the process control industry, which means that our customers will have unprecedented flexibility in the management of their assets and the most holistic view yet of their plant operations," said Mr Donald Morrison, senior product marketing manager, Honeywell Process Solutions. "The recent addition of Matrikon to the Honeywell portfolio brings together the vendor independence of Matrikon's monitoring technology with Honeywell's expertise in the deployment of Profit Suite applications."