A practical approach for large-scale controller performance assessment, diagnosis, and improvement

Eastman Chemical Company has developed a large-scale controller performance assessment system spanning over 14,000 PID controllers in 40 plants at 9 sites worldwide. Controllers can be sorted in order of performance to quickly identify which need attention. Performance history is available to track improvement or degradation in performance for a single controller or an entire plant. Diagnostic aids are available for both novices and experts to substantially reduce troubleshooting time. E-mail reports are automatically generated and sent to subscribers to keep them informed of relevant changes with minimal investment of their time. The user interface is web-based to allow universal access to any employee. Use of the system has dramatically increased controller optimization productivity. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.