An Engineer-Oriented Teaching Practice of Industrial Process Control Systems

China has revealed her ambition to become a strong manufacturing power in the “Made in China 2025” strategy plant. This requires a large force of high-level process control engineers who are proficient in both control theory and engineering practices. However, there is a gap in the demand and what the universities are providing. In China, control engineering is an independent subject found in the programs of many universities at multiple levels. Currently, the graduate level education in the control engineering major is emphasized more on theory and less on engineering practice. This has resulted graduates who lack the essential abilities to be competent for engineering tasks. This paper introduces the teaching practice of the new course, “Design and Implementation of Industrial Process Computer Control System” in the National Key Laboratory of Synthetical Process Automation which is part of the teaching reform initiative of Northeastern University in responding to the above problem. We introduce the concepts of the design of the teaching contents and the relative teaching methods. The teaching contents of the course extends the traditional automatic control principle course, including object modeling, controller design, control effect analysis, with the complete life cycle of the control system, such as the design and development of the logical control of equipment, HMI, control system testing, and more. Also, a comprehensive experimental system is developed to facilitate the teaching. Based on the field bus technology, the physical experiment system is developed to facilitate students to carry out the experiment of the corresponding course contents. During teaching, each theoretical knowledge point is combined with experiment on the industrial process control system. The system features online experimental capabilities, supporting students in both online and offline practical learning. Judging from the actual teaching effects for the last three years, the new course has obviously improved students' enthusiasm for engineering practice and improved students' understanding and mastery of the concept of control system from a system perspective.