Economic Auditing of Control Systems

Abstract

In this chapter, a method for integrating the use of the benchmarking and optimisation algorithms with economic process control auditing is discussed. The focus of the methodology is to selectively target process control loops with economic importance for benchmarking and optimisation. The method is a step by step approach to prioritising control loops according to economic importance and then benchmarking and optimising the necessary loops. Section 2.2 discusses a framework for process control benchmarking at the different layers of the process hierarchy and reviews some of the properties and characteristics of performance assessment metrics at each layer. Section 2.3 discusses the motivation for integrating process control benchmarking and optimisation with process economic control auditing and provides an integrated control and process revenue and optimisation (ICPRO) framework as a template for conducting process control audits. In Section 2.4, the integrated control and process revenue and optimisation framework is used to evaluate an industrial case study example. The case study example involves three offshore oil production platforms. The results and recommendations from this industrial case study are presented. In Section 2.5, some of these results are used to optimise a sub-system on one of the oil production platforms. Conclusions are presented in Section 2.6.