Expert Systems as a Stimulus to Improved Process Control

Whether Expert Systems are viewed as a fundamental principle for organizing and animating expert knowledge, a challenge to create much smarter computer software, a concept for organizing otherwise ill-structured systems, or a mildly fraudulent fad, their goal of capturing common sense reasoning in software correlates well with the structure of process control knowledge. Long ago, the process control field realized the limited value of formal analytic methods in favor of a combination of recognized, simplified, analytic techniques, designer judgements, and tuning procedures. Control design is not alone among process control disciplines to potentially benefit from this recognition. Intelligent software should improve all aspects of process automation design and function, and also the documentation and communication of this design and function to humans. This paper will discuss the strengths and limitations of the Expert System concept as related to: • General control algorithms • General control system design • Process control configuration and documentation tools and languages • General human/process interfacing • Process diagnosis • Higher level process management