(84b) Advanced Process Control – Prove the Value

In the early days of the development of advanced process control (APC) techniques, there was much discussion of the potential economic benefits of this new approach. Each project had to be carefully justified, generally using an estimation methodology unique to the project. As the field matured, standard approaches to benefit estimation appeared and were commonly used. Projects were often executed without a formal economic analysis because the benefits of APC were generally accepted, especially in plants with several successful implementations. Recently the economic benefits of APC have once more been called into question because of an increased focus on real-time performance measurements across the plant. It is no longer sufficient to simply state that the benefits of APC are large and obvious. Real-time measurement of the application’s performance is quickly emerging as a requirement, as companies place more emphasis on identifying improvement opportunities and properly apportioning limited resources. This presentation will outline the problem and suggest potential approaches to providing real-time measurements of the economic performance of an APC application.