Controller benchmarking based on economic benefits

Benchmarking is a tool for improvement and should be considered as a benefit-driven activity. The ultimate goal of benchmarking is performance improvement. One of major difficulties in the benchmarking of MIMO systems comes from the shear number of control loops contained in a plant. By directly focusing on the improvement of plant´s economic performance, we present a controller benchmarking framework based on the existing multi-level control hierarchy. At each level of the hierarchy, a constrained optimization which reflects the economic objective is performed. The active constraints recorded in the optimization process are treated as the goal of improvement in the lower levels. Consequently the constraints in each layer which limit the performance of the plant are isolated. The retuning decision is made based on the result of optimization of an economic metrics. In this manner, the benchmarking problem becomes not only manageable but also meaningful.