Orlando, Fla.— Attendees at Foxboro's recent users group meeting learned of the firm's willingness to help customers "tune up" their Intelligent Automation (IA) control systems without spending any money.

Using the title, "Measured Performance Improvement—Guaranteed—with No Capital Investment," Foxboro is offering to send application specialists (several trained in applying the Six Sigma quality process) to customer sites to conduct process audits and identify improvement opportunities at Foxboro's expense.

According to Peter Martin, Foxboro's corporate marketing vp, unless measurements are defined and data is collected and reported, control system investment benefits decline as systems age. Conducting site audits helps users understand where and how much productivity their control system investments could provide.

Key to long term system benefit awareness is Foxboro's patented Dynamic Performance Measures (DPM). When used as part of the system tune up audits, DPM provides operators continuous, online economic benefit indicators based on models specialized for each user.

Attendees also learned about Foxboro's new e-commerce web site, www.iastore.com, where IA users can order configured systems online. Users with negotiated purchasing agreements will have secure access to customized shopping environments where pricing is shown in local currency and reflects negotiated discounts. Products listed on these customized sites will be limited to products authorized by the customer for online purchasing. Future plans include online order status information.

For more information, visit www.controleng.com/freeinfo .