Tuning of PID controllers has proved to improve plant performance and increase stability and safety. However, at most plants, the biggest enemy of PID tuning is time. As a DCS engineer, you are often a firefighter — supporting ad hoc work on a daily basis. As a result, you have no or too little time to tune PID control loops for temperature, pressure, flow, level, etc. Especially while the most complex PID controllers that often cause process oscillations and alarms require a lot of time due to their slow responses. That’s frustrating. The good news is that you can do your PID tuning first time right. How? That and what PID tuning exactly is I’ll explain in this blog.
