Process control? Isn’t that just for process engineers?

Automated process control is vital to the efficiency, safety and profitability of dozens of industries, thousands of companies. Food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, petroleum, plastics and many more. Yet few non‐technical managers and even fewer process workers, other than production and process engineers, actually understand what it is and how it works. If they did know, many problems could be averted, unnecessary shutdowns avoided, risks to product quality eliminated (explanation). Industrial training tends to concentrate on job‐specific instruction and on key safety issues. A broader approach, including simplified understanding of how a plant works and is monitored, enables everybody to use common sense to recognise potential problems and avert actual downtime. So how do you train non‐engineers (or engineers of other disciplines) to understand process control? How do you tap the intelligence and experience of shopfloor staff to make the plant more efficient? This article explores training for process control, including the use of simulation and the design of training programmes, together with the benefits to be gained.