Control: from mechanism to management

Control is often seen as an exclusively technical aspect of industrial process operation. However, this technology has an increasingly important impact on business performance. Industrial processes to which control is applied range from the traditional areas of the petrochemical industries to the power and water industries and the control of processes associated with maintaining environmental conditions in buildings. In each of these areas the relationship between the control systems and the process plant, and the contribution of the systems to operational management, has been transformed by the rapid development of computer-based technology