Among numerous firsts the founders of MTN were part of the team who implemented the first equation-oriented unit RTO at the Sunoco®, Sarnia, Canada Hydrocracker in 1991.  We each have 30-40 years of experience in process automation of oil refineries and petro-chemical plants.  Steve Treiber sold Treiber Controls Inc. to a NASDAQ listed competitor in 1998.

Treiber Controls Inc.'s "claim to fame" is;

• first commercial automated response testing product for process control (1985)
• first commercial on-line inferential properties predictor (1988)
• first multi-variable constraint controller embedded in DCS equipment(1988), and
• first equation oriented RTO system to be integrated with commercial flowsheet simulators(1992)

These innovations dramatically reduced the time and cost of implementing advanced control and optimization of refining and petro-chemical processes while improving robustness, sustainability and profitability of applications.

Our technology and services were oriented toward usability by our clients rather than only technical experts and our service contracts always drove toward maximizing technology transfer to our clients, while providing them with as much support as they desired.  We have brought this same philosophy to our new endeavor, Real-time Integration of Planning and Scheduling with Plant Control, which we believe is the new area of opportunity in oil refining and petro-chemicals.

To maximize value to our clients we have designed our products to be used by our clients' teams in planning, scheduling, automation and operations.  Furthermore, in order to increase the base of clients who can use and sustain these applications we work directly with clients as well as with their chosen service providers.

Steven S. Treiber, Ph.D., P.Eng.(linkedin)

Engineer, inventor, entrepreneur and Professor(Adjunct) University of Toronto

Steve Treiber is President and co-founder of Manufacturing Technology Network Inc.  He started his chemical engineering career at the Shell Montreal East refinery in 1969. After leaving Shell in 1984 he starting his own engineering company, Treiber Controls Inc.  Since then he has developed and implemented Advanced Process Control and Real-time Optimization technology and applications at refineries and chemical plants around the world for clients including Shell, Mobil, Marathon, Sunoco, PEMEX, Saudi Aramco, Ultramar, Petro-Canada, Husky, Irving Oil, Esso, Union Carbide, Solutia, BASF, Lyondell, DuPont, NOVACOR and others.

Steve holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from McGill University and is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada.

He has published over 30 papers in journals and conferences and is co-author of numerous patents in the field of process control and optimization.

Ronald S. McLeod, Ph.D.(linkedin)

Ron has over 40 years of experience in refinery and chemical plant modeling, advanced control, and real-time optimization.  Prior to becoming an independent consultant in 2008, he spent 20 years with Aspen Technology and Treiber Controls.  He has been the leader of projects to implement refinery-wide optimization through co-ordination of the refinery planning LP with process unit closed-loop optimizers. At Treiber Controls he was the co-inventor and developer of a very successful real-time optimization technology and leader of process unit optimization projects. The first 20 years of his career were spent with Shell Canada and Petro-Canada involved in the development of multivariable control and real-time optimization of refineries and chemical plants. Ron has a B.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and Ph.D. from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in Manchester, England, and has published over 10 papers in journals and conferences.

D. Bruce Black, M.A.Sc., P.Eng.(linkedin)

Bruce Black is a chemical engineer with over 35 years of process engineering experience in the refining and chemicals industry. He has worked for refiners and consulting firms during his career in a variety of roles including design and implementation of multivariable constraints controls, development and implementation of engineering process models, process engineering design, and engineering project management.  In addition, he has extensive real-time software development experience and has developed and sustained software for multivariable constraint control and real-time optimization. Bruce has M.A.Sc. and B.A.Sc. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto and is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario.