Operation-oriented advanced process control

Since the 1980s, the world-wide process industries have adopted and benefited from the applications of advanced process control (APC), particularly the model predictive control (MPC). Among many implementations of the APC technology, some successfully demonstrated substantial financial benefits but others failed to exhibit much advantage over conventional control technologies. These failures might have cost general acceptance of this technology in the process industries. In several regions, the acceptance of APC in the process industry has been extremely slow. The slow adoption of this well-proven technology has caused the losses of the industry's potential productivities and financial benefits. As the global-oriented economy is driving for the future of process industries, applications of such technology can become crucial to boost the competitiveness of the industries regardless of its location or culture. The failures of APC can be attributed to various factors. Based upon the observation from many successful applications, an APC design that addresses more of the daily process operation issues has better chance of successes. Therefore, using a successful project as an example, the article promotes an "operation oriented" APC design concept.