A Hierarchical Approach to Monitoring Control Performance and Plant-Model Mismatch

Controllers are often tuned during plant commissioning, with a fixed process model. However, over time degradation can occur in the process, the process model and the controller, making it necessary to either re-tune the controller or re-identify the process model. Authors have proposed a variety of approaches to identify plant-model mismatch (PMM) and control performance degradation (CPD). While each approach may have its own advantages and disadvantages, they are generally designed to function on different timescales. The differing timescales result in the need for a multi-level hierarchical approach to monitor, detect, and manage PMM and CPD, as illustrated through a continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing application, i.e., a direct compression tablet manufacturing process. This work also highlights the requirement for index-based metrics, that enable the impact of PMM and CPD to be quantified and assessed from a control performance monitoring perspective, to aid fault diagnosis through root cause analysis to guide maintenance decisions for continuous manufacturing applications.