Improvements to pressure sensing instruments enable new practices

Most plants operate with reactive or preventive maintenance approaches that do not take advantage of improvement in smarter and better devices. Use of new best practices for field-device selection, installation, and maintainability will reduce time and cost while improving operations and process availability. Principles that should be considered before implementing new best practices include: 1. Take a technician's point of view to minimize risk and costs due to service and repairs. 2. focus on life-cycle costs versus short-term capital project costs. 3. Consider maintainability as a main factor in instrumentation life-cycle costs. Ways to apply these principles when selecting pressure transmitters are described.