Basic Continuous Control

Some might call this category “process control” or “instrumentation and control,” because the material in
these topics is closest to the historical scope of ISA and is consistent with ISA’s original name, Instrument
Society of America. But today, proportional, integral, derivative (PID) and other continuous control
techniques are used in many applications outside the process industries. For example, they are used in
areas such as automotive paint shop controls, motion controls, electrical equipment controls, building
automation, ship stabilization controls, and many, many other areas.
PID is so pervasive that one could not be considered well educated as an automation professional if he or
she does not know the basic concepts of PID and PID tuning. In fact, the CAP Steering Team decided early
on that, while many people today work with manufacturing automation information technology that
does not involve basic plant floor control, it did not make sense for them to be called automation profes-
sionals without knowing the basics of plant floor control—including continuous control.
Measurements are extremely important in any automation task. It is really true you can control well only
those things that you can measure—and accuracy and reliability requirements are continuing to increase.
Continuous instrumentation is required in many applications throughout automation, although here we
call it process instrumentation because the particular type of transmitter packaging discussed is more
widely used in process applications.
There are so many measurement principles and variations on those principles that this topic can only
scratch the surface of all the available ones, but it hopefully covers the more popular types.
Analytical Instrumentation and Control Valves are more applicable to process applications, although
these also are used in environmental and other applications in a variety of industries. The type of control
system documentation discussed here is also more specific to process industries, but many outside processes
can learn from the high degree of development of these documentation conventions. The control equip-
ment topic in this category covers what has traditionally been called distributed control systems (DCSs),
although that designation no longer has intrinsic meaning.
Control valves are critical components of a control loop in process and utility industries. It has often been
demonstrated that, in nearly all process plants, control valve problems are a major cause of poor loop per-
formance. A general knowledge of the impact of the control valve on loop performance is critical to process
control.

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2 BASIC CONTINUOUS CONTROL – I

It has become commonplace for automation professionals today to delegate the selection and specification
of instrumentation and control valves and the tuning of controllers to technicians. However, performance
in all of these areas may depend on advanced technical details that require the attention of an automation
professional; there are difficult issues, including instrument selection, proper instrument installation, loop
performance, advanced transmitter features, and valve dynamic performance. A knowledgeable automa-
tion professional could likely go into any process plant in the world and drastically improve the perfor-
mance of the plant by tuning loops, redesigning the installation of an instrument for improved accuracy,
or determining a needed dynamic performance improvement on a control valve—at minimal cost. More
automation professionals need that knowledge.