16. Performance Monitoring of Metal Processing Control Systems

Numerous investigations have shown that the performance of control systems in the process industries is not satisfactory. This particularly applies for the steel industry, where it is the norm to perform controller tuning only at the commissioning stage and then never again. A loop that worked well at one time is prone to degradation over time unless regular check and maintenance is undertaken. The field of metal processing continues to provide challenges in the application of process control and supervision at every level of the automation hierarchy, enterprise optimisation and system integration. Techniques successfully used in other process industries have to be adapted to the specific properties and conditions of steel processing, particularly rolling mills, showing high sample rates, varying time delays and semi-continuous operation. This chapter provides a contribution in this direction. Successfully completed industrial case studies and tailored CPM tools are presented. The studies involve the application of different CPM methods to different plants in the rolling area.