PAS Launches Real-time Application Platform for Optimization of Process Industry Operations

Houston, TX - February 28, 2006

PAS, a leading supplier of People and Asset Solutions for the process industries, today released PlantState Suite 5.0, the platform for real-time profit improvement in the process industries.

The latest version of PlantState Suite has been enhanced to include a number of embedded capabilities, which until now have only been available as separate products from various vendors. These capabilities are now embedded and included with PlantState Suite 5.0. Highlights of the key capabilities embedded in PlantState Suite 5.0 include:

• Event Historian - for collection and historization of events from process monitoring and control systems, including process alarms, operator logbook entries, or any other event
• OPC Server - for the transfer of data as collected via the PlantState Suite system interfaces to other applications and/or systems using the OPC protocol
• APC Studio - for development of real-time calculations and advanced control strategies, including simulation and deployment testing
• APC Online - to provide real-time I/O from PlantState Suite applications to various distributed control systems, programmable logic controllers and other plant-floor devices

With these enhanced capabilities, PlantState Suite supports an even broader range of real-time performance improvement applications:

• Advanced Process Control of linear & non-linear systems
• Alarm Management for a wide range of process control systems
• Control Loop Monitoring and Controller Tuning of field control devices
• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) calculation and reporting as defined by the user

PlantState Suite has a long history of improving profits at process plants around the world with many installations in the processing industries. PAS Founder and CEO commented: "Our successful rollout of PlantState Suite and the overwhelming positive response from our customers is a resounding confirmation of our strategy for a unified platform for real-time performance improvement and visualization applications."