All-You-Can-Eat Platters of Automation Products

Jim Montague is the Executive Editor at Control, Control Design and Industrial Networking magazines. Jim has spent the last 13 years as an editor and brings a wealth of automation and controls knowledge to the position. For the past eight years, Jim worked at Reed Business Information as News Editor for Control Engineering magazine. Jim has a BA in English from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and lives in Skokie, Illinois.We know why you're here. Sure, we publish and post lots of stories in Control and at Controlglobal.com, and we hope they're helpful and insightful. But we also know the magazine's real meat and potatoes are its basic products.

Of course, this is because the right product, service or technical feature can make all the difference to process control engineers, their application's performance and their organization's survival and success. Luckily, you can jump on Controlglobal.com and click on the "products" tab for multi-pronged tools for immediately finding just the right components. It's like you're standing in front of a big smorgasbord or unlimited buffet, and someone hands you a big fork, plate and napkin. Yummy.    

First, "Search Products" leads to the Product Resource Center, which is an easy-to-search, continually expanding database of almost 2000 products from more than 500 manufacturers organized into 17 major product categories and hundreds of subcategories. The part I like best is that it's all lean results with none of the fat that clogs up searches on the regular Internet.

Second, "Download Literature" goes deeper to Controlglobal's E-lit section, which presents more than 50 product brochures, catalogs and other resources on how many products and solutions work and should be applied.

Third, the growing "Company Profiles" section presents each manufacturer in a product-style write up. Basic introductions are accompanied by links to each firm's products, applications, press releases, training resources, literature, catalogs and exhibits. There are also links to key contacts and a running tabulation of production mentions and editorial coverage.

Fourth, the "Technology Roundup" section is just what it sounds like—a compilation of all Control's many articles that each gather all the latest products available in a particular technical category. This is an instant list that smart shoppers can use to begin comparing vendors.

Fifth, the "Vendor Notes" area includes 90 detailed explanations by suppliers about their products and how their technologies work. Because many buyers don't always know what device they need—especially with all the technical advances happening these days—these notes and the E-lit section can be very useful in helping potential users sort out exactly what solution will be most appropriate and useful for them.

There may be better places than Control and Controlglobal.com to find process control and automation solutions, but I sure haven't seen them yet.