Measurement and Control Basics Fourth Edition

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Process Control

Introduction

To study the subject of industrial process control effectively, you must
first gain a general understanding of its basic principles. To present these
control principles clearly and concisely, an intuitive approach to process
control is used. First, however, some basic definitions and concepts of process
control are presented.

Definition of Process Control


The operations that are associated with process control have always
existed in nature. Such "natural" process control can be defined as any
operation that regulates some internal physical characteristic that is
important to a living organism. Examples of natural regulation in humans
include body temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate.

Early humans found it necessary to regulate some of their external environmental
parameters to maintain life. This regulation could be defined as
"artificial process control" or more simply as "process control," as we will
refer to it in this book. This type of process control is accomplished by
observing a parameter, comparing it to some desired value, and initiating
a control action to bring the parameter as close as possible to the desired
value. One of the first examples of such control was early man's use of fire
to maintain the temperature of his environment.

The term automatic process control came into wide use when people learned
to adapt automatic regulatory procedures to manufacture products or pro-
cess material more efficiently. Such procedures are called automatic
because no human (manual) intervention is required to regulate them.

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