Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Process Control

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jprocont

Review

The current state of control loop performance monitoring A survey

of application in industry
Margret Bauer a , Alexander Horch a, , Lei Xie b , Mohieddine Jelali c , Nina Thornhill d
a

ABB Corporate Research, Wallstadter Str. 59, 68526 Ladenburg, Germany

Institute of Cyber Physical System Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
University of Applied Science Cologne, Betzdorfer Str. 2, 50679 Kln, Germany
d
Centre for Process Systems Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK
b
c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 6 March 2015
Received in revised form 6 November 2015
Accepted 7 November 2015
Available online 24 December 2015
Keywords:
Control loop performance
Industrial process
Monitoring
Fault detection
Process control
Survey

a b s t r a c t
Control loop performance monitoring (CPM) in industrial production processes is an established area
of research for which many methods to detect malfunctioning loops have been developed. However,
it is unclear which methods are successful in an industrial environment. Often, there are additional
aspects such as organizational issues, data availability and access that can compromise the use of CPM.
In this paper, we are reporting on the results of a survey amongst CPM users. The survey takes stock
of existing methods and their use in industry as well as which faults are most frequent and can be
detected. Organizational as well as implementation issues are investigated and discussed. This paper
aims to identify open research topics and the direction of development of CPM in industrial production
processes.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.

6.
7.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Survey description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CPM pervasiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
CPM methods, time trends and faults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1.
Mathematical methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2.
Nature of time trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.3.
Prevalence of faults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
CPM framework, workow and implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1.
CPM workow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.2.
CPM implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Open research topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1. Introduction

Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 6203 716463.

E-mail addresses: margret.bauer@de.abb.com (M. Bauer),
alexander.horch@de.abb.com (A. Horch), leix@csc.zju.edu.cn (L. Xie),
Mohieddine.jelali@fh-koeln.de (M. Jelali), n.thornhill@imperial.ac.uk (N. Thornhill).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jprocont.2015.11.002
0959-1524/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Plants in the process industries use predominantly PID controllers to keep important process variables at their desired
setpoints. The concept of PID control was introduced to industrial
production processes in the 1930s to 1950s [1], rst on a small scale
with a few pneumatic loops per process and today on a large scale

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

with several hundreds if not thousands of PID control loops digitally

implemented.
With the advance of automatic control came the need to assess
the performance of the control loops, according to the business
stratagem If you cant measure it you cant manage it. Increasing computational power enabled assessments which looked, for
example, at the standard deviation of process trends. Standard deviation or variance is an obvious candidate as a performance index
because many engineers selling control solutions use a depiction of
data before control improvement and after where the before
case shows a heavily uctuating process variable and the after a
near constant smoothened out time trend.
A key challenge in the assessment of control loops is to distinguish between a controller that was performing poorly (A)
because there was something wrong with it and (B) because of
an outside disturbance. This was rst addressed by Harris in 1989
when he published Assessment of closed loop performance
[2]. The measure, later to be named the Harris index compares
the variance of a process variable to the minimum achievable
variance, which is caused by outside disturbances. This paper
attracted a signicant amount of interest in the academic world of
control engineering and brought the problem formulation closer
to research institutions.
A reason for the focused attention on the assessment of control
loops was that despite the prevalence of PID controllers ensuing
studies found that the controllers were not doing as well as everyone had assumed [3]. In fact, before a measure was introduced,
controllers were just used. Now these controllers were good or
bad, acceptable or poorly performing. And most studies found
that there more poor performers than expected.
A key requirement for the assessment of control loops is that
data from routine operation and closed loop control should be
used. The initial assessment of a single control loop has since then
expanded to frameworks and procedures, and includes diagnosis,
fault identication, isolation, and root cause and plant wide disturbance analysis. This research area today is often called control
loop performance monitoring (CPM).
CPM now forms a substantial body of research articles and
industry applications. Over the 25 years since the publication of
the original article, several review articles and tutorials have been
published. The rst reviews were written about a decade later
[4,5] focusing the multivariate extensions, feedforward control and
industrial aspects. Hgglund [6] as well as Jelali [7] made signicant contributions by explaining working indices in plain terms
and providing codes for industrial implementation. More recently,
the Springer series Advances in Industrial Control includes four
monographs on control performance assessment, including valve
stiction detection [811]. Furthermore, the recent textbook [12]
explains established methods in detail and gives frameworks,
implementation guidelines, applications and tools.
CPM was developed in close cooperation with industry. In [7],
a list of research articles and their industrial applications in the
chemical, petrochemical, pulp and paper and other industries in
provided. The same article also lists the commercial packets that
comprise control loop monitoring tools, either as stand-alone solutions or built into automation and control software.
In this article, we are scrutinizing what has been achieved in
industry in the last three decades. The focus is on the production
companies in the chemical, oil and gas, pulp and paper and other
industries that use CPM to manage and assess the control of their
processes. The questions addressed here are:
What works in industry? Which methods are most useful? Which
frameworks and processes are successful?
Is CPM a standard or only used by leading production companies?
What are the key challenges? What are the open research topics?

These questions were gathered into an online survey that was

distributed to control engineers at production plants in various
industries and around the world. Since a survey requires a comparatively large number of participants we have focused the content
on single control loops and particularly on PID loops.
The results of this survey amongst CPM practitioners are presented in this article. The methodology of the survey and the
background information of the survey respondents are described
in Section 2. Section 3 discusses the awareness of CPM and the
scope: how well are control loops performing today? Is there still
a need for CPM? In Section 4, the prevalence of the various methods as well as problems that can be addressed by CPM are discussed
while Section 5 investigates procedures, frameworks and workow
that further the success of CPM in industry. Section 6 looks at future
research directions and the satisfaction of CPM users with current
tools and methods.

2. Survey description
An online survey was conducted to capture the prevalence of
CPM worldwide. There is an abundance of publications on survey
methodologies for all survey purposes and groups of respondents
[13]. Many providers offer free platforms to easily format questionnaires and capture results. For this survey, the authors chose Google
forms, which is part of Google drive and does not require any software installation. In addition, the results are stored in spreadsheet
form and reports are generated automatically.
The design of the questionnaire is the most important aspect
of the survey. When putting the questions together many pitfalls
have to be avoided. For example, the questions have to be phrased
objectively and clearly in a coherent order. Non-exhaustive listings
must be avoided. To ensure a high response rate, the questions must
be meaningful and interesting [14].
To ensure the validity of the questions, interviews with industry
experts were conducted and the survey questions were discussed.
These experts were Florian Wolff at BASF, Germany, Duane Muller
at AngloAmerican, South Africa.
For this type of survey the group of respondents are limited.
The respondents were identied as lead control engineers in production companies from various industries. In order to address the
target audience, several approaches were started. First, all personal
contacts of the authors were approached. Second, what is referred
to as snowball sampling was pursued, that is, known responding
control experts were asked for referrals among their colleagues.
Thirdly, published authors in the area of CPM that now work in
industry were approached. The contact data was retrieved from
the journal article or conference proceedings. In addition, the survey was distributed in a Honeywell user group meeting and the
participants lled the results in during the meeting. All responses,
electronic or on paper, were anonymous.
In total, 69 control engineering experts in production companies
answered the survey. Fig. 1 lists the respondents by continent and
by industry. Roughly half the respondents were from Europe (33
out of 69) because the authors contact were used to send out the
questionnaire. The majority of respondents (64%) work in chemicals or oil & gas. This may be partly explained because chemical
and petrochemical companies are traditional strongholds of CPM.
It should be noted that the answers do not always add up 69 because
not all respondents answered all questions.
The respondents have various levels of experience in control
engineering, as indicated in Fig. 2. The total is about 1000 years of
control engineering experience on which the survey is based on.
Respondents were also asked how many loops are allocated for
each control expert and the results are displayed in Fig. 3. On average, a control engineer is responsible for about 450 loops. However,

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

Fig. 1. (a) Respondents by continent; (b) respondents by industry.

www.processcontrollerperformance.com
overview of the responses.

together

with

an

3. CPM pervasiveness

Fig. 2. Number of years respondents have worked in control engineering.

Fig. 3. Number of PID control loops per control engineer.

the number of loops ranges from 30 to 2000. The work environment and the attention that can be paid to each loop is therefore
tremendously different depending on the plant and application. In
general, high or low numbers of loops do not correspond to certain
industries. For example, a control engineer working in a chemical
plant may be responsible for 50 loops or for 1000, depending on
the application, on company policy and on the organization.
The focus of the survey is on CPM users. Signicance testing of
such a small sample group is somewhat limited. The results are nevertheless interesting and well worth reporting because of the vast
experience of the respondents. Similar surveys conducted among
control experts had a comparable sample size [1517].
The survey results will be discussed throughout this paper.
The questionnaire is available on the following website

About two thirds of the survey respondents already use CPM

tools or packages. This may not be representative of the industry
since a control engineer will have been more likely approached if he
is known for in the CPM community. However, CPM tools are relatively recently installed, in most cases they have been in use for less
than ten years, see Fig. 4. On average tools have been implemented
a decade ago, that is, in 2006. This is especially noteworthy when
comparing it to the experience of the respondents in Fig. 2 where
the average experience of the respondents is 14 years. This means
that CPM has been introduced during the working lifetime of the
respondents.
From the number of recent installations we can conclude that
in general the installation of CPM tools has increased. This leads
to the question f control loops are performing better today than
before the onset of CPM in the early 1990. Since then, several studies
documented that control loops are not doing their jobs [3,18].
Over the past three decades, tools have been developed by control and automation system companies, by third-party software
companies and, in the beginning, by user companies themselves. As
software packages become more sophisticated and get easier access
to historical data, own developments fall away and are outsourced.
Today, automation companies can offer integrated solutions and
small companies or divisions provide tailored services and consulting. In addition, process data is more easily accessible. A
consequence is that in-house developments fall by the wayside.

Fig. 4. Years CPM tools have been used in the organization.

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

4. CPM methods, time trends and faults

Some conclusions that can be drawn from Fig. 5 are as follows:

The organization and categorizing of CPM methods depends signicantly on the viewpoint of the CPM practitioner and expert.
For a comprehensive list of CPM methods see for example [12].
Generally, CPM methods can be grouped according to three
criteria:
1. Mathematical method or algorithm.
2. Nature of time trend analyzed.
3. Type of fault or malfunctioning addressed.
All methods can be grouped according to each category, however, some are strongly associated with a particular method (e.g.
PCA), time trend (e.g. oscillation) or fault (e.g. sluggish tuning such
as the Idle index [19]). It is often convenient to group the indices
according to their main functionality, which can be either method,
time trend or fault. For example, some indices may be referred
to as oscillation index while others may be labeled stiction
index.
The following sections present the survey results on the usefulness of methods as well as the occurrence of typical time trends
and faults.
4.1. Mathematical methods
All control experts were asked to rank certain methods according to their usefulness. The CPM methods were grouped into seven
categories to keep the time to answer the survey within a reasonable limit. The authors felt that it would neither be feasible nor
benecial to assess each method individually. The results are presented in Fig. 5 and the provided more detailed description of the
categories are given in Table 1.

The simpler the method the higher the number of respondents

who nd them useful. Operating mode statistics are easy to compute though not always easily accessible since they are not
always stored in the data historian and equally easy to interpret.
Multivariate or advanced statistics are more difcult to compute
and to interpret.
All methods are very useful to some CPM users, each user probably has his or her favorite method to use.
Algorithmic indices have still untapped potential and could be
promoted further. Most respondents who know about these
indices nd them very useful, however, they are unknown to
about a quarter of the respondents.
The impact which minimum variance indices, in particular the
Harris index, had in the academic control community is not
matched in the industrial community. The reason may be that
the Harris index works well to explain the idea of CPM and on
certain data trends but is meaningless if the data contains non
stationary signals.
4.2. Nature of time trends
Ideally, the time trend in regulatory control is stable or constant
and lies within a certain operating region. In reality, the trends are
never smooth but show certain degrees of variability. There are several features or disturbances in the time trends that an experienced
control engineer will recognize by visual inspection. Generally, disturbances can travel through a process through physical or data
connections. Thus, a disturbance can be picked up in a number of
control loops.
Most CPM techniques assess the controller performance by analyzing the time trend. Typical time trends are shown in Fig. 6 and the

Fig. 5. Methods and how useful respondents perceive them to be.

Table 1
Method categories and methods that are grouped under this category.
Category

Methods

Operating mode statistics

Time in manual versus time in auto, number of operator interventions,

number of tuning changes, loops in saturation
Minimum and maximum threshold crossings, mean, standard deviation
Idle index, integrated absolute error (IAE), scatter plots of manipulated
variable versus controller output (MV/OP plots)
AR(X) models, articial intelligence (AI), stiction models, Hammerstein models
Correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares (PLS)
Harris index and related indices
Gaussianity testing, probability density function, surrogate data analysis

Basic statistics
Algorithmic indices
Model-based techniques
Multivariate statistics
Minimum variance techniques
Advanced statistics

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

Fig. 6. Time trends of process variable and controller output for common disturbances.

Fig. 7. Sample time trends of faults and their rating, how frequently they occur.

prevalence of these time trends according to the survey are given

in Fig. 7. In the following, each time trend is briey discussed.
Saturation: Saturation manifests itself at the controller output
which is intermittently at its maximum or minimum (usually 0%
or 100%). It will deviate from its extreme for a short while only to
return back to it. Saturation can result from a poorly dimensioned
actuators, poor controller tuning or may be caused by integral
wind-up of PID controllers after a large setpoint change occurred
[12].
Sinusoidal oscillations: Oscillations are introduced in process
variables by a number of means such as poor tuning settings,
actuator faults or external disturbances. Generally, as oscillations
become sinusoidal as they travel through a process via physical
connections since the process acts as a low pass lter.
Manual control: If the controller is not acting satisfactory the
operator or control engineer often switches it off. This is seen in
the control system as a switch from automatic to manual mode.
Sluggish behavior: An unwanted behavior seen in the time trend
is labeled as sluggish or slow. This means that the process variable
only slowly follows the setpoint. There is no overshoot after a
setpoint change. The reason for sluggish behavior lies usually in
the tuning settings.
Nonlinear oscillations: Some control loops contain a nonlinear
element such as a faulty valve and thus cause nonlinearity in the
time trend of process variable and controller output. A nonlinear

disturbance affects the process variable regularly and repetitively

but contains higher frequency components and can therefore be
distinguished from a sinusoidal oscillation.
Quantisation of process variables: All signals are digital in
amplitude. The resolution of the signal is determined by the sensor. The sensor may have a coarse resolution so that the time
trend shows step-like features. This often applies to temperature
sensors which could have, for example, a resolution of 0.5 while
the temperature only uctuates by 1 .

Generally, the results shown in Fig. 7 are not new control engineers in the 1990s looked for similar features in the data then as
today: Which controller outputs are at their limits, which loops are
oscillating and which are in manual control.
Somewhat surprising in Fig. 7 is that saturation is the most frequent problem. Detection of saturation is straight forward. More
intricate is the identication of the cause of saturation since this
is often an indication of actuator dimensioning but can also occur
when tuning settings are incorrect or no anti-windup algorithm is
implemented.
A similar issue is manual control which should always be investigated as it shows that there is an underlying problem with the
loop. It means that the operator, for various reasons, does not trust
the controller to do its job automatically. The root causes range
from poor tuning over interacting loops to training needs.

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

sensor faults should not be picked up by the control loop monitoring

system but by the maintenance personnel only.
The degradation of process equipment as well as of actuators
and sensors is strongly linked to condition monitoring, asset management and maintenance management. Despite several efforts to
integrated control loop performance monitoring (for example, ISA95) with these neighboring disciplines, control loop performance
monitoring is often conducted independently. This appears to be
more because of workow, data exchange and organizational issues
rather than methodologically founded.
Fig. 8. Control loop elements and associated faults according to the survey results,
see Fig. 9. The height of the column reects the prevalence of the fault.

Though infrequent, it is surprising that quantization still occurs

in this decade. The cause should not be technological but rather
poor calibration of the sensor. In some instances, the responsible
control engineer does not have the right to change sensor settings.
4.3. Prevalence of faults
When controlling a process, several things can go wrong. Fig. 8
shows a control loop with its main components: controller, actuator, process and sensor. All of these components can cause a
disturbance and the degradation of the control loop performance.
The most frequently occurring faults are depicted in Fig. 8 showing that the actuator followed by the controller are the dominant
causes for problems in the loop. The size of the columns reects the
prevalence of the faults according to the survey as shown in Fig. 9.
The complete survey results as partly indicated in Fig. 8 are
shown in Fig. 9. For the four most prevalent faults actions to remedy
the cause can be directly inferred: A poorly tuned controller can
be re-tuned either manually or automatically, a sticky valve will
have to be replaced either immediately or in the next scheduled
shut-down, actuators and sensors are replaced. Other faults may
require more discussion and action to be taken are not as straight
forward. Interacting loops for example are difcult to detect and
often require a complete rethinking of the control strategy.
Arguably, the picture of the most prevalent loops is still the
same as in 1989. This means that although the overall control loop
performance may have improved the same faults still occur. This
is particularly surprising for the most prevalent cause of wrong
tuning settings since most modern controllers are equipped with
an auto-tuning feature that should eliminate the problem.
With the advent of smart sensors faults of the sensors should
become less important in the future because the sensor will detect
and diagnose faults and send a message to the system. Thus,

5. CPM framework, workow and implementation

Many authors have noted that CPM can only be successful if it
is embedded in the companys existing operation and workows.
For example, a control engineer will attend to the Top 10 poorly
performing loops if his salary or bonus is linked to it. Wolff and
Kramer [20] note that CPM is a cycle of improvement. Analysis must
be followed by the derivation of corrective actions, which then need
to be implemented before the next analysis is carried out.
A critical aspect of CPM is to involve all key personnel that are
affected by the performance of the controllers and the collaboration
between different roles.
Jelali [7] proposes a framework for implementing CPM methods and lists the main corrective actions as re-tuning, re-design
or maintenance. Training is possibly a further corrective action.
In some instances, the controller may do a good enough job but
since the operator does not trust the algorithm, she may put the
controller into manual. Further education on the process, control
design or tuning may be required. The training on CPM itself is critical for success. However, it is near to impossible to train all involved
personnel on interpreting the CPM results of individual methods.
Instead, it is paramount that the CPM gives guidance toward the
nature of the root cause of a poorly performing loop.
The workow is closely related to the implementation of the
CPM solution, that is, as a stand-alone solution or even on the process control system. Survey results addressing both workow and
implementation are presented in this section.
5.1. CPM workow
Monitoring the performance of controllers is deeply embedded
in the routine operation of the plant. Plant personnel have to ensure
the continuous, protable and safe operation of the plant for which
regulatory control is a key aspect. However, monitoring the performance of control loops is not necessarily part of the day-to-day

Fig. 9. Problems addressed by CPM.

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

Fig. 12. Prevalence of Top X lists of poorly performing loops.

Fig. 10. Number of personnel involved in CPM.

work plan. It has to be integrated differently depending on the

process and organization.
Key questions when scrutinizing the CPM workow comprise
the following:
Who assesses the control loops?
How often are loops assessed?
What are the actions following the assessment?
These aspects were investigated in the survey.
First, a question concerning the people involved was asked: Who
in the organization is involved in CPM? The results are presented
in Fig. 10. The results show that these are mainly control engineers,
followed by APC engineers and process engineers. Maintenance
staff and operators are not as often involved in the discussion of
control loops though they often are affected by the results. Other
staff involved in CPM includes KPI managers, system technicians or
chemical engineers. Most of the time (70%) control engineers alone
or one additional department are involved in CPM. When developing methods it is important to keep the collaborative aspect in
mind. This can specically mean that the results are distributed to
all involved parties in an easy to understand format.
The second question concerning the workow relates to the
frequency with which control loops are assessed. The results are
shown in Fig. 11. Most plants conduct a CPM assessment on a
weekly basis often in conjunction with a xed meeting. Others carry
out the assessment less frequent while others do daily monitoring
or assess the performance continuously and address issues as they
arise.
A key aspect of the CPM workow that was captured in the survey concerns actions that are triggered by the CPM results. This was
asked as an open ended question. Most answers related to one of
the following actions resulting from the CPM assessment:

Tuning initiatives
Maintenance, in particular referring to valves
Simple operating changes
Control conguration changes

Fig. 11. Frequency of assessment of control loops.

Several respondents stated that CPM is used before the installation of advanced control solutions to ensure that the baseline is
functioning sufciently before installing high level control.
In some organizations CPM is a formalized procedure with
weekly meetings and follow-ups. More importantly, performance
appraisal may be linked to CPM results giving monetary incentives
to staff. On the other hand, CPM is carried out on an ad-hoc basis
and adds to the already high workload of control engineers and
other plant personnel.
Very often, the loops that have been agged as poorly performing are grouped into Top X lists, that is, a list of the ve (Top 5) or
ten (Top 10) malfunctioning loops extracted. These are usually the
worst performing loops. The Top 5 loops for a process unit may be
identied and discussed in a weekly meeting between the operators and the control personnel. In the survey, the respondents were
asked which Top X list they nd most useful. The results are displayed in Fig. 12. This shows that most respondents prefer a Top 10
list which appears to be a balance between a manageable work load
and a signicant number of relevant control loops to be addressed.
An important aspect of Top X lists is to incorporate the significance of the control loop. That is, in addition to a performance
index such as the Harris index, the loops have to be assessed by
their importance in the process. For example, a loop controlling
the outside slurry feed might be performing very poorly. This will
be a known fact to the operator and control engineer. However, no
actions are taken to x the loop since the slurry feed is not critical to
the production. Thus, loops have to be ranked by their signicance
to the overall production objectives. This requires a combination
of detailed process knowledge and understanding of the control
congurations.
5.2. CPM implementation
The focus of this study is on plants with modern process control
systems (PCS) in place. There are still many plants worldwide with
old PCSs and a low level of automation. CPM requires a modern PCS
and a connected data historian since it heavily relies on the logging
of process data for most analysis methods.
The survey deliberately did not include any mentioning of particular solutions offered by CPM companies. The reasons for this are
as follows. The number of respondents is not high enough to allow
a meaningful ranking of any sort, regarding the most popular or the
best solution. Also, the solutions are not comparable enough so that
respondents can answer the questions in a meaningful way. A third
reason is that two of the authors are associated with a vendor company and may be accused of a biased view. A list of commercially
available CPM solutions and their key features can be found in [7].
From an industrial application perspective, there are two different ways of supplying the product of CPM namely as either a
product or a service. CPM as a product is when the solution is delivered as a software that is integrated with the data historian. The
software solution is used by the end user, not the CPM supplier.
CPM as a service means that regular reports are computed by a
service provider and sent to the end user. The main difference is

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

Fig. 14. Satisfaction with CPM tools: How satised are you with the current tools?
0 not satised, 9 completely satised.

they see themselves as a service provider, while respondents who

have purchased a commercial packet regard CPM as a product.
Fig. 13(c) shows that CPM is predominantly implemented as a
stand-alone solution and not on the control system (PCS or DCS).
This is a very important question concerning the ease of use and
whether the report can be updated easily.
An advantage of running CPM on the PCS is the interfacing the
data repository. However, in many instances the PCS might not
be available to the user of CPM. Also, PCS and DCS are often difcult to access and do not provide a platform onto which additional
applications can be easily implemented.
Fig. 13. (a) CPM as product versus CPM as service, (b) CPM as in-house development
versus commercial solution, (c) CPM used on PCS, as stand-alone solution.

that CPM as a service has to be more automated and standardized

because it has to be interpreted by non-expert users. The report
should highlight critical loops and underlying causes and suggest
corrective actions. This means that either the methods are clear, the
results have to be denite, and that there is little room for interpretation and discussion. Fig. 13(a) shows the result of the survey:
the split between product and service is nearly equal. This means
that there is a need for both automated methods and methods that
leave room for discussion.
In the survey, the respondents indicated whether they use a
commercial packet, their own development or a combination of the
two (Fig. 13 (b)). It is noteworthy that respondents using their own
development predominantly regard the solution as a service, i.e.

6. Open research topics

After more than 25 years of active research in control performance monitoring, it is of great interest to ask whether there are
any relevant research questions left open. Here, we address this
question from the industrial application perspective. Fig. 14 shows
this level of satisfaction which appears message. Since most of the
respondents use CPM the message from this result is mainly: People
who use it see an advantage of the tools.
Most respondents see value in applying CPM to their industrial
processes and are reasonably satised with the current tools. At
the same time, there appears to be improvement potential because
some respondents are not satised at all. This may be because of the
specic unsatisfactory tool these respondents are using but more
likely because there is a research opportunity.
In discussions with end users BASF and AnlgoAmerican areas of
open research were identied and clustered. The resulting list of
these topics together with the survey ndings is shown in Fig. 15.

Fig. 15. List of topics for further research and development (split between what vendors and users think).

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

The clear main result is that the respondents ask for better guidance
on corrective actions to be taken. This does not come as a surprise
because proper corrective action is a pre-requisite for economic
payback of the investment in CPM.
The second most important research need relates to the mentioned prioritization of control loops. A corrective action is only
relevant if the asset relating to it has a certain importance for the
overall performance or criticality of the whole plant.
The topics of training, guidance on parameter tuning, automated
data selection and graphical display relates to the implementation
of CPM methods in industrial solutions. This result of the survey
ts the current tendency to not program own CPM tools but to try
to buy commercial products or services. Commercial tools often
offer more advanced functionality for long-term monitoring, data
handling, graphical display and training material.
An interesting point is the second last statement that CPM methods relates to condition monitoring of rotating equipment. As a
matter of fact, there is a certain disconnect between CPM on the one
side and traditional condition monitoring Condition monitoring
refers to fault detection for mainly mechanical process equipment.
If applied to the same process at the same time, both are often
dealt with in different software tools that are managed by different
people. Nowadays, there is much more information available for
analysis, such as production data, condition monitoring data, operating conditions, plant parameters, etc. Such data will increasingly
be accessible also for CPM1 . Hence, methods should be developed
that make use of that data fusion. The benet of integrating different data sources should be an active eld of research. This is often
the result of recent trends referred to as data analytics and big
data.
Such gaps can be bridged by research, which brings both
technologies closer together, or by organizational structures. The
latter can be realized by specic staff that share the responsibility of both aspects in the same plant. Chemical company BASF
in Germany which were interviewed initially for the purpose of
the survey, has deployed so-call Asset Managers for each of their
plants. These asset managers connect plant data from the automation system, the maintenance management system and other ERP
data.
Other areas such as automatic, data-driven detection of stiction
behavior in process control valves has been extensively researched.
There are more than 15 different methods published already. Also,
efforts have been made to integrate them into an index-fusion in
order to increase the reliability of detection [11]. While it may be
worthwhile to further improve the reliability of existing methods,
it does not appear to be fruitful to develop yet another detection
algorithm that will outperform the existing ones.
A conclusion of the answers about further research direction
from an industrial perspective is that simple methods work best
in most cases. Simplicity is here referring to three aspects:

1. Simplicity of parameterization: Methods that need to individually be tuned, parameterized, trained etc. will most likely not
survive in the industrial CPM practice.
2. Simplicity in interpretation of the results: Methods that require
signicant training, experience of interpretation, do not resolve
ambiguities and interpretation guidelines will most likely not
survive in industrial CPM practice.
3. Simplicity in computational complexity. Even though computational power still increases, CPM is typically applied often and

1
This unlimited access to data is called Industrie 4.0 in Europe and Industrial
Internet in North-America.

to a large amount of control loop data. Hence long computation

time still can be a drawback.2

In order to address the relevant research questions in the future,

it is recommended that academic institutions collaborate with the
process industry, that is, with end users. This will guarantee that
the relevant problems are solved, the results are feasible to be engineered, interpreted and used. Also, new CPM algorithms should be
tested on real-life data rather than only in simulation because often
root-causes interact which can hardly be simulated realistically.

7. Conclusions
This paper presented results from a survey on industrial application of CPM in the process industries. It has become evident
that there is considerable knowledge about control performance
present in many process industries. The topic of monitoring and
assessing control performance has been important in the past and
will remain to be important also in the future.
We conclude that after 25 years of intensive research there
are still relevant research questions to be solved in the area of
CPM. We will here disregard all indirect aspects such as software
implementation, usability, presentation of results, data access, and
integration into automation systems. They may lead to research
effort, however this is hardly specic for CPM application.
Staff responsible for control performance in process plants are
increasingly given more and more complex tasks so that extensive
tool support for CPM has become a standard. The application of
such tools, however is still quite heterogeneous. One reason is the
different experiences companies have gathered over the years. A
second reason is the different maturity of commercial tools, they
differ in philosophy (product versus expert tool versus service) and
in price. There is not yet any standard which methods to use and
how to present the results to the users, though attempts have been
made [21].
CPM tools are mainly needed to prioritize maintenance actions
related to deteriorated control performance. Guidance for corrective action is a vital requirement that is not yet solved sufciently
well. For this, very often simple methods seem to be sufcient. Rootcauses diagnosing is still an open problem, but, at the present state,
one can detect loop malfunctions with a good level of condence
in many situations.
One key nding is that CPM is more that the application of
numerical algorithms to plant data. Companies that successfully
apply CPM have undertaken thorough efforts to integrate CPM
into their daily plant operation and asset management. This also
includes different work procedures.
A nal question of interest is if the control performance in the
process industry has been improved during the last 25 years (or if it
would have deteriorated more without CPM). This question is difcult to answer. The companies that see value in CPM obviously seem
to apply it successfully. In those companies, it can be expected that
control is performing on a better level than earlier. There are, however, still many companies neglecting the advances in CPM such
that the industry average of non-optimal control performance can
be expected to be much lower than desirable. There is hence still
signicant potential to improve control in the process industry.

2
This comment will in the future possibly be less important when CPM calculations largely are done in the cloud. Some companies already offer the experiment
with CPM-as-a-Service where the algorithms are performed in a powerful (local or
private) cloud infrastructure.

10

M. Bauer et al. / Journal of Process Control 38 (2016) 110

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Florian Wolff at BASF and Duane
Muller at Anglo American for their insight as well as Richard Salliss at Honeywell for distributing the questionnaire at a user group
meeting. This paper is a result of many discussions with senior
control practitioners and academics. We would like to thank Russ
Rhinehart, Kevin Brooks, Tom Edgar, Biao Huang, Mike Grimble and
Gerrit van der Molen for their extremely valuable contributions.
References
[1] S. Bennett, A brief history of automatic control, IEEE Control Syst. Mag. 16 (3)
(1996) 1725.
[2] T.J. Harris, Assessment of control loop performance, Can. J. Chem. Eng. 67 (1989)
856861.
[3] D. Ender, Process control performance: not as good as you think, Control Eng.
40 (1993) 180190.
[4] S.J. Qin, Control performance monitoring a review and assessment, Comput.
Chem. Eng. 23 (1998) 173186.
[5] T.J. Harris, C.T. Seppala, L.D. Desborough, A review of performance monitoring
and assessment techniques for univariate and multivariate control systems, J.
Process Control 9 (1999) 117.
[6] T. Hagglund, Industrial implementation of on-line performance monitoring
tools, Control Eng. Pract. 13 (2005) 13831390.
[7] M. Jelali, An overview of control performance assessment technology and
industrial applications, Control Eng. Pract. 14 (2006) 441466.

[8] B. Huang, S.L. Shah, Performance Assessment of Control Loops, Springer, Berlin,
1999.
[9] A.W. Ordys, D. Uduehi, M.A. Johnson, Process Control Performance Assessment:
From Theory to Implementation, Springer, Berlin, 2007.
[10] M.A.A.S. Choudhury, S.L. Shah, N.F. Thornill, Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities
and Valve Stiction Data-Driven Approaches, Springer, Berlin, 2008.
[11] M. Jelali, B. Huang, Detection and Diagnosis of Stiction in Control Loops: State
of the Art and Advanced Methods, Springer, Berlin, 2010.
[12] M. Jelali, Control Performance Management in Industrial Automation, Springer,
Berlin, 2013.
[13] P.V. Marsden, J.D. Wright, Handbook of Survey Research, 2nd ed., Emerald
Publishing Group, Bingley, UK, 2010.
[14] D.A. Dillman, Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, 2nd ed.,
Wiley, New York, 1999.
[15] M. Bauer, I.K. Craig, Economic assessment of advanced process control a
survey and framework, J. Process Control 18 (2008) 218.
[16] M. Bauer, K.S. Brooks, C. Sandrock, Industry expectations and academic practice
in control engineering education a South African survey, in: IFAC World
Congress, Cape Town, 24-20 August 2014, 2014.
[17] D. Wei, I.K. Craig, Grinding mill circuits a survey of control and economic
concerns, Int. J. Miner. Process. 90 (2009) 5666.
[18] L. Desborough, R. Miller, Increasing customer value of industrial control performance monitoring Honeywells experience, AlChE Symp. Ser. 98 (326) (2002)
153186.
[19] T. Hgglund, Automatic detection of sluggish control loops the single-loop
case, Control Eng. Pract. 7 (12) (1999) 15051511.
[20] F. Wolff, S. Kramer, Regelguetemanagement. Atp, 3/2014 (2014) 5664.
[21] NAMUR User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries, Controller Performance Management: Monitoring and Optimisation of Regulatory
Control in Production Plants. NAMUR Recommendation NE 152, 2014 www.
namur.de.