Good tuning for your pocket!

The International Society of Automation (ISA) announces that the newly released fourth edition of its Good Tuning: A Pocket Guide by Gregory K. McMillan has been updated to deliver more precise and optimal tuning for nearly all types of applications in the process industries. Greg McMillan (Right) being congratulated by ISA VP Publications 2009-10 Vitor Finkel  on receiving a Author's award some years ago. “This new edition is significant because it’s designed to meet more diverse tuning objectives and address more difficult tuning challenges,” says McMillan, a widely acclaimed and honored automation professional and author (and friend of Read-out!). “Readers will learn how to choose the most applicable tuning rule and associated parameters to make the most out of today’s powerful auto tuning and adaptive control software.” Central to the value of the new edition, McMillan says, is helping automation professionals unlock the full potential of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers. “PID controllers have an incredible number of options and parameters besides tuning settings, but much of their potential and power have remained untapped,” he explains. “A key benefit of this newly updated book is that it provides the straight-forward direction and principle-based guidance to tune most controllers to their full capability and address a very wide spectrum of applications. “At the end of the day,” McMillan points out, “you need the means to handle the most difficult of tuning situations, deal with a window of allowable controller gains, meet different objectives, and achieve greater robustness. Understanding the interrelationships among the process, tuning, performance and PID features enables automation and process engineers to work together to improve process efficiency and capacity.” Instrument, process control and process engineers will appreciate the guide’s concise summaries, step-by-step descriptions of field-proven tuning procedures, table of typical tuning settings, overview of common valve performance problems, logic diagrams for trouble-shooting and other useful features.