(118c) Importance of Proper Measurements for Process Control in Industrial Practice

It seems obvious that in order to control a system, one needs to be able to measure all the relevant variables, inputs and outputs with equal importance. However, in the industrial practice, there are myriad of examples where some of the most important variables are either not measured, or measured very poorly. Such variables often include a mix of the more standard temperatures, pressures, flows and the highly specialized online and offline analytical measurements such as GC/MS, IR and others; in other words this is not a phenomenon limited to one class of measurements. In many cases, this otherwise highly unreasonable state of things is also completely lost to the people at the plant. A new normal is generated due to various reasons and the plant does not make an attempt to improve it unless severely pressured by external business factors. As a consequence, it usually takes a highly concerted effort to bring things back to normal. In this talk we would like to share some examples and try to provide guidance how to approach the problem.