An industrial and academic perspective on plantwide control

The purpose of this paper is to stress the importance of selecting the right plantwide control structure and the need for a formalized approach that can encompass the many issues that arise in plantwide control design. Since the concept of process control design based on a holistic view of the process came about, the variety of procedures and approaches to the design problem has illustrated the difficulty of a unified approach. Using examples, the need and advantages of using a systematic approach based on considering the plant economics are highlighted. The examples deal with disturbance rejection, throughput maximization and economic optimization of plants consisting of parallel units.