Innovation in industrial model predictive control

The industrial application of model predictive control has been largely con fined to petrochemical processes. Extension of exploitation to wider indust ry has been limited. Among the reasons that may be proposed for this can be highlighted a lack of precedent applications, large engineering costs and inappropriate control technologies. This article describes initiatives to a ddress such barriers so that the benefits of MPC can be more widely availab le: demonstration projects on mainstream process applications; software too ls to minimise engineering costs; embedding MPC within the plant regulatory control system; and a flexible approach to control technology so that solu tions can be tailored to best match process situations.