Asset Optimisation

Advanced Process Control — optimising processes in industrial process control systems

Increase company profit through optimising processes

Maximise profitability by maintaining optimal operating conditions 100% of the time.

Talk to an APC engineer
Advanced Process Control: an operator reviewing plant performance dashboards with margin leakage identified across the process

Achieve Production Excellence

Industry-leading APC technology

4Sight's AI-driven Advanced Process Control solutions bring new intelligence to industrial operations, enabling businesses to optimise their processes in real time. Integrating advanced AI algorithms with traditional control systems, we help industries improve efficiency, reduce waste and enhance production output.

Our solutions are designed to automatically adapt to dynamic conditions, ensuring consistent performance while lowering operational costs. With 4Sight's expertise, businesses can achieve greater precision, minimise downtime and meet their production targets with cutting-edge, data-driven technologies.

Engineer using a tablet on the plant floor — maximise profitability by maintaining optimal operating conditions 100% of the time

Bring together the power of data to operate your plant more efficiently, with advanced control software that helps production, quality and process engineers remedy and avoid events that limit production profitability.

Our Experience

At the forefront of MPC projects since 2000

4Sight's APC expertise has been at the forefront of Multivariable Model Predictive Control (MPC) projects since 2000, delivering numerous benefit-driven solutions across the globe in the Mining, Metals and Minerals sectors and the Petrochemical industry.

As early adopters of APC, the Petrochemical sector provided 4Sight with invaluable knowledge and experience, which we have successfully applied to the Mining sector, achieving significant results.

Two process engineers reviewing APC controller performance across multiple screens in a control room

The Technology

What Advanced Process Control does

Advanced Process Control refers to a technology implemented within industrial process control systems to address specific performance or economic improvement opportunities in the process.

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is the key component of an APC system, enabling optimal process operation and increased productivity. MPC achieves this through predictive control using dynamic process models, which is proven to increase throughput, save energy and reduce quality giveaway.

As MPC control strategies vary, our experienced APC engineers work closely with experts alongside our customers to ensure successful and seamless implementation.

  • Reduced process variability
  • Push profitable constraints
  • Reduce product quality variability
Chart comparing process variation without APC, with APC reducing variation, and reduced variation allowing operation closer to the maximum limit

Reduced variation allows the plant to operate closer to its limit.

AspenTech Advanced Process Control enables companies to increase throughput, improve product quality, reduce energy and raw material usage, and increase overall operational efficiency while keeping the process between safe limits of reliable operation. Additional benefits include standardisation of processes and consistent use of best practices, ensuring higher operational stability and reduced maintenance requirements, and therefore sustaining long-term value.

The Platform

A full set of integrated features

AspenTech Advanced Process Control provides a full set of integrated features for developing, deploying and maintaining advanced control applications.

The AspenTech® solution: a single, flexible platform that delivers sustained value

AspenTech Advanced Process Control provides a unified environment for AspenTech's three industry-leading control formulations within an architecture that provides the ultimate flexibility and usability.

The choice of three control formulations provides superior control performance, execution efficiency and exceptional constraint handling to maximise asset utilisation regardless of the control challenges. Major benefits are realised through reduced variability, increased throughput and increased yields of more valuable products.

Solutions Addressing Industry Challenges

Solution elements

The benefits of one integrated solution for optimising linear and non-linear processes:

Adapt and optimise simultaneously

Improve ROI with rapid controller deployment, continuous model improvement and simplified workflows to enable more engineers to implement and maintain APC systems.

Simplify tuning and optimisation

Streamline controller tuning with a step-by-step configuration wizard to directly specify objectives.

Improve performance with robust control

Increase controller up-time by making controllers more resilient to model quality issues and process disturbances.

Monitor with real-time diagnostics

Visualise, analyse, monitor and access real-time controller KPIs to gain key insights into controller performance.

Sustainability

Benefits that do not degrade

Many APC solutions suffer from degrading benefits. Process changes, equipment ageing and changing economic conditions are but a few of the factors that drive the need to maintain controller models.

AspenTech Process Explorer showing APC controller effectiveness, target and achieved benefit per day, benefit source ratio and off-time analysis for a crude unit

The sustainability features of AspenTech Advanced Process Control help to quickly identify, diagnose and correct problems with eroding performance.

The Numbers

The most profit-hungry engine available for Advanced Process Control

5%Increase production by up to
10%Reduce energy usage by
3%Improve yields by

Case Study

Letšeng Diamond Mine

Using APC to increase output and improve operations

Learn how 4Sight's Operational Technologies, Asset Optimisation division was able to design an APC application spanning the primary, secondary and tertiary crushing circuits, as well as the DMS feed.

Multivariable Advanced Process Control solutions, such as Model Predictive Control (MPC), are designed to simultaneously coordinate multiple process units to achieve synergy throughout a processing plant, resulting in stable operation and a steady platform for optimisation.

Related: Advanced Process Control (APC) and Asset Optimisation.

Get In Touch

Talk to us about Advanced Process Control

Tell us about your process and we will show you where the margin is currently leaking.