In this month’s issue we publish the last of consulting editor and control loop guru, Michael Brown’s, Loop Signature series. We thought it would be an appropriate time to trace the history and get his views on the state of the industry.
The beginnings
When asked what sparked his interest in the field, Mike says: “It all began in 1978 when I met Dave Ender of Techmation at an ISA exhibition in Houston. Dave, a former Fisher chief valve designer, is the developer of the Protuner, and without a doubt the world’s leading expert on loop optimisation. He is absolutely brilliant, and inspired my interest in loop optimisation over many years; he has always been my mentor and a very good friend.”
It took the two until 1989 to realise that virtually no one really understood the practicalities of regulatory process control and what a huge grey area it is. This motivated Ender to write some basic courses on practical loop analysis that turned out to be very effective. Mike goes on to say that he was literally blown away by the course material. It had such an impact on him that he decided to sell the trio of successful control systems companies which he had built, and embark on a new career in loop tuning.
Success did not come easily at first, however, and the going was tough. With very little previous plant experience he was now going in to try to sort out the problems that had puzzled plant personnel, sometimes for years. As far as the teaching was concerned he says it was really a case of the ‘blind teaching the blind’.
After spending the last 20 years honing his skills and refining the course material the status quo has shifted. To date he has performed optimisation and consulted in many plants all over the world, published over 150 articles and presented his courses to thousands of delegates. He has become a fountain of knowledge on the subject with an unbridled enthusiasm for teaching. He particularly enjoys sharing the enthusiasm of his students as they grow through their new understanding and insight.
“The bonus is seeing some of them go on to become control loop experts in their own right,” he says.
Industry comment
When asked about the changes he has seen in the industry over time, he responds passionately in his usual outspoken style: “I am still very frustrated by the lack of interest shown by the vast majority of process companies. To date, the only company that I know of that has instituted optimisation as a separate discipline is Sasol at its Secunda complex. The problem is that it is very difficult to convince top management in most companies that they should invest in trying to make their control equipment work properly. It is almost impossible for an outsider to prove the financial benefits that could be obtained.
“The equipment is getting more and more advanced, but the base layers do not work any better. In my opinion the vast majority of sophisticated control systems like DCSs, and PLC/scada systems, are, from the control point of view, really being used as man-machine interfaces. The plant operators are running the plants, not the control systems. I said recently to a company where tests I had done proved that most of their loops were not working well, that I found it strange that they were not prepared to spend a relatively small amount of money to get a costly DCS working efficiently. There is no doubt that most plants are losing huge amounts of money that could be recovered if they optimised their controls properly.”
Never one given to negativity, he balances these points of view by saying: “Despite all this I have had many enjoyable technical successes over the years. The leading one was at a plant where gold is recovered from mine dumps. With the installation of simple 2-loop feedback and feedforward properly optimised control loops, the plant is making an annual saving of over R20 million on reagents.”
Mike, the entire SAI&C team thanks you for the contribution you have made to the magazine and the industry through your willingness to share your hard-won knowledge.
We also look forward to your continued involvement through the Case History series, which will now run in every alternate issue.
[Note]: The next article in the series will be published in June as our consulting editor will be taking a well deserved break in May.
Till next time.
Steven Meyer, Editor
SA Instrumentation & Control
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