This is the first of our NEW LOOK Customer Newsletters and we have a lot to report...

We invite you to join us in welcoming new employees Mr. Greg Spence and Dr. Tony Walton as Business Development Executive and Applications Engineer respectively.

Mr. Greg Spence is a qualified industrial chemist with over 20 years experience working in both manufacturing and application industries. He has particular knowledge of working in batch processing environments. Greg is based in Huddersfield and as such will be leading most of our Northern business development activity.

Dr. Tony Walton is a Chemical Engineer with over 10 years experience developing software for process simulation and control. He joins our client support and product development groups. Tony is located in our Gerrards Cross office travelling on demand.

Welcome aboard!

And that's not all... This quarter Curvaceous has been very busy expanding across the globe with new agents for North America and Australasia.

 Stochos Incorporated of Schnectady, New York
 is a company providing quality computerised
 solutions to the process industries. Led by
 Professor Don Holmes, Stochos Inc. has been
 highly successful since its conception in 1968.
 Read more about Stochos and the new
 Curvaceous partnership here.        

 Mr. Finn Peacock, a Chartered Electrical Engineer
 with a background in process control, has taken
 up Curvaceous training to ready himself for the
 Australian process industries on his return to
 Sydney this month. Mode2 Technology will have
 the Australians Curvaceous in no time. View the
 press release and watch out for more details of
 this relationship as it blossoms down under.

Check out our other news and press releases

1. CURVACEOUS DEVELOPMENTS

We went through a re-branding exercise in the summer which concluded that we should tone down our corporate colours by changing from hot pink to cool blue. 

Planning for next years TAP Forum is already underway to make it bigger and better than ever before.  This years Forum, held in March, was attended by 30 delegates from 15 companies. Ratings were very good and the considerable noise level during the coffee breaks showed that networking was well and truly at the top of everyone's priority list. Suggestions are always invited so let us know what you would like to see in Spring 2005.

We have been continuing to win hearts and minds with visualExplorer (CVE) with new users including GlaxoSmithKline, Shell ExPro and Leukaemia Busters. The latter are a charity run by Drs. David and Bee Flavell of Southampton General Hospital  to develop new drugs for the  treatment of extremely sick children. They would be pleased to have you visit their website at www.leukaemiabusters.org.uk.

Existing users continue to uncover gold of their own, with more successes including Huntsman Petrochemicals who presented their case study at the Emerson Manufacturing Excellence Conference and said

“Using CVE, the Curvaceous guys were telling us things we didn’t know about our process in under six hours that we had just spent three months trying to discover.”

A great result for Huntsman and a profitable event for all who attended. If you missed it don't worry, Curvaceous will return to Manufacturing Excellence in Ireland next Spring. More details will follow.

We have continued taking big strides with processModeller (CPM) including models in the last 12 months of an unsteady state coating process, an oil refinery catalytic reformer including four reactors and four distillation columns, a large plastics plant with three crystallisers feeding two banks of centrifuges and, in the last week, a very encouraging initial model covering five steps of a batch process. Another exciting achievement using the same CPM you all know and love!

Research is steadily continuing in all areas of Geometric Process Control (GPC) technology. We have recently assembled some simple examples and better explanations of the unique dual response of the CPM envelope so that we can better answer the questions that some of you have about how CPM copes with time affects. The answer was always “very well” but now we can go further and show you why this is true without getting into relativistic philosophy on the many different “nows” in a process flow sheet.

NEW! A point-value predictor which is completely independent of the BOZ and, unlike most other inferential methods, requires no customisation for different qualities is in an advanced stage of development.

Call us to chat if any of these things strike a chord of interest
 

2. ONE-CLICK AND IT'S ALL OVER

Our NEW 'One-Click Launch' for PI® is hitting all of the right buttons. Released this Autumn the Front-End is making CVE even more usable for you, so you get even more benefits from us.

At this years TAP Forum, members educated us about how difficult it is to extract and organise the large volume of data often required in Visual Explorer analysis. The 'One-Click Launch' for PI dramatically quickens the extraction phase which allows you to start improving your process sooner and more easily.

The data clean up routine and automatic launch from PI sourced data to CVE occurs with just one click of the mouse. This facility eliminates all of the data preparation steps previously required. This consequently reduces the knowledge and time needed to start analysis, therefore bringing business benefits to your fingertips much more quickly.


Our ‘one click launch’ product is now available – from PI data in Excel®, ‘one click’ will …
 
              Convert date fields
                       Identify and resolve label/tag conversion
                              Clean your data of PI generated error messages
                                     Enumerate text columns
                                            Clean-up invalid data
                                                   AND create a data file
                                                           then automatically launch CVE


Conversion information is automatically documented together with enumeration fields and label changes.

C:Suite ‘One-Click Launch’ is a product in its own right. It is integrated with and extends the standard facilities of visualExplorer Version 2.3 to enhance data accessibility for users of PI data historian. The standard find and replace facility with CVE can also be used to customise the ‘One-Click Launch’ to your specific standards.

With the 'One-Click Launch' Interface everybody can use CVE effectively.

Our commitment - if you find an anomaly using your PI data, we will enhance our product to fix it.


If you use another historian and like the sound of this product, please contact us.
 

3. GETTING A FUNCTIONAL SERVICE?

To enhance the outward flow of knowledge and new developments we have divided Upgrades into two types. 'Service Upgrades' for essential maintenance and 'Functional Upgrades' for the delivery of major new functional enhancements. Our magnified ability to supply suitable Upgrades to your products in less time will improve your process capabilities further.

Upgrades of either type are only available to TAP Members.

Read on to find out what other benefits you could be enjoying with TAP Membership.

4. LOOK AFTER YOUR LICENCE

Maintain FREE UPGRADES and hold on to the valuable TAP FEE LIMITATION (pay only 50% of any TAP Fee increase), great news for all Users.

These incentives are available to TAP Members when you pay your TAP fees before your TAP membership expires. If fees are received after the expiry date you will no longer be eligible for these benefits.

This existing offer is a small way to thank our most loyal and supportive customers for their continued and highly-valued support.

 
5. THE DECIDING FACTOR(Y) - AUTOMATION WORLD

"A new class of software blends data from production and business systems to support better, faster decision making at all levels of the manufacturing enterprise."

Curvaceous features in the Summer Issue of Automation World. The article mentions our work with Aughinish Alumina, Ireland and includes a fetching CVE display. See the full article here.

Keep an eye out for Curvaceous stories springing up all over the place. Including the Pro-Talk selection of websites.

If you have had an experience you would like to share please contact us and we'll do our best to get your voice heard.
 

6. USER GROUP ACTIVITY

The GPC User Group, Chaired by Mike Tyrrell of INEOS Chlor, are currently discussing what is required from an interface similar to the 'One-Click Launch' for PI® mentioned above but for use with IP21.

To have your say or for more information regarding the independent User Group, please register via the GPC User Group webpage.

Watch this space for more news from the Independent User Group.
 

www.curvaceous.com