What are you going to do to improve your skills in 2009? To develop your process control skills, you have a wide array of topics to choose from.
At process control guru, we recommend that you keep yourself well-rounded, and expand your skills in each of the following areas:
1. Instrumentation & Analytical Devices. Recent advances in miniaturization have made analytical instruments more prevalent.
2. Control Theory. Consider taking a refresher on controller tuning. Or, expand into more advanced topics like feedforward and cascade. If these are old hat, then step up to some advanced control.
3. Valves. So overlooked and misunderstood. Spend a day in the shop with a valve mechanic. You will learn a lot.
4. Process. Every control engineer must know their process. See previous blog at:

Get to Know the Process


5. People Skills. Do yourself a big favor, and expand your comfort zone. Give a talk at a conference. Put on a training course for operators. Or take the IT guy to lunch.
6. Business Finances. Develop a deeper understanding of how your company makes money. Learn which costs are fixed and which are variable. Use this information to document the value of your work.

Be sure to include all of these elements in your training plan for 2009. You’ll be glad you did.