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Process control

Process control mixes cybernetics and physical laws to master material and energy transformation

Process control is my initial expertise: I gradually expanded from the cybernetics of machines to organizations'. Meantime, process control information technology converged with non-physical control, from pneumatics, hydraulics, and electronics to digital.
Unfortunately, process control expertise does not exist anymore as a holistic engineering discipline, it is now split into system architects, cybersecurity specialists, software programmers, instrument engineers, process designers...
I still fascinated by industrial processes and very much enjoy developing and setting up process control strategies off and on site.  
My rules and beliefs: 
  • A deep understanding of the process is a precondition of its control: One must identify himself as the machine, feeling being the machine, exhaust operators' knowledge, stare endlessly at measurement trends
  • PID control is an old, yet incredibly powerful control means that needs to be mathematically and physically mastered befoere to envisage sensitive advanced control technics
  • Control strategies bumpless switching conditions the success of neat, robust control
  • When things become complicated, go back and follow another way (the number of code lines is a good precursor of failure)
  • The most important artefacts of process control are measurement and actuators
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Johann Sebastian Bach. the music closest to silence, closest, in spite of its being so highly organized, to pure, one-hundred-degree proof Spirit" (Aldous Huxley, Island)