Production Control of a Polymerization Plant using a Reduced Set of Control Variables

The specifics of process manufacturing have a great influence on production management, and the focus of process-production control is to maintain stable and cost-effective production within given constraints. The synthesis of production-control structures is thus recognized as one of the most important design problems in process-production management. This paper proposes a closed-loop control structure with the utilization of production-performance indicators (pPIs) as a possible solution to this problem. pPIs represent the translation of operating objectives, such as the minimization of production costs, to a reduced set of control variables that can then be used in a feedback control. The idea of production-feedback control using production PIs as referenced, controlled variables was implemented on a procedural model of a production process for a polymerization plant. Some preliminary results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed methodology.