January, 2005

In the good old days, the family doctor would make home visits for emergencies or physical checkups. Those days are gone but not for customers of Superior Controls. These days Superior Controls is doing the same as the oldtime doctors, but for automation/information systems throughout New England. Superior Controls now has annual Service Contracts and Preventive Maintenance Agreements in place for customers in NH, RI, CT, and MA. Why are these services growing in popularity?

Consider these actual events:

• An electrical storm causes a power failure for a 12-year-old conveyor system moving bar-coded product between six rooms. The PLC controlling the conveyors loses its memory due to a dead battery. There is no documentation or backup software to be found. Superior Controls'engineers are brought in on an emergency basis to rewrite the program. This takes two weeks (seven days a week) while employees manually carry the product from room to room. Lost productivity costs are estimated at $150K.
• A pharmaceutical facility has a PC collecting and saving GMP (validated) data from a batch reactor. Its hard disk fills up and stops saving data. As a result, the estimated retail value of the lost batches is approximately $6M.

Preventive Maintenance Agreements

The true cost of business disruptions and late or cancelled deliveries to customers is often incalculable. It's likely that these events could have been avoided with some yearly preventive maintenance. Preventive Maintenance Agreements (PMA) can provide scheduled PLC battery checks (preventing loss of programs), and hard disk memory checks (preventing loss of GMP data), as well as the acquiring of a backup copy of application programs.

Superior Controls has more than 40 experienced IT and automation engineers providing this service for manufacturers throughout New England. Most often these involve semiannual visits with a Preventive Maintenance Report submitted after each visit.

Service Contracts

Service Contracts (SC) can provide customers with emergency support services. Many manufacturers no longer have the staff or experience to support emergency situations. Most also cannot afford to have their automation/information system down for any extended period. With our large group of engineers on staff, we are able to provide a variety of Service Contracts that provide quick response times. Most of our Service Contracts are written for support for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, however, 24/7/365 contracts are also available.

Site Assessment

Superior Controls is now providing numerous customers with both Preventive Maintenance Agreements (PMA) and annual Service Contracts (SC). The first step, prior to starting a PMA or SC, is to perform a Site Assessment. The assessment includes a survey of the equipment and the backup of the application programs. The resultant Site Assessment Report documents the PLCs, DCSs, Servers, and Ts in the defined automation systems. The report provides both our customers and our engineering staff quick access to the type of equipment, make and model, and programming software required to interface the control systems in an emergency. The cost of Site Assessments and PMAs are based on the number of controllers, servers, etc. Service Contract costs are based on the hours of coverage.

Although each PMA and SC is customized for each facility, the following benefits are also realized:

• Site assessments can also include risk assessments and proposals or recommendations for risk reduction
• Discounts on consulting services are provided for multi-year contracts
• Discounts on retrofit or new projects

These Service Contracts and Preventive Maintenance Agreements are providing manufacturers throughout New England peace of mind and an increased confidence in their automation reliability. So, if you are sick or need a physical- go to the hospital and find a doctor. But, if your automation system is down or needs a check up- call Superior Controls.