2.2 Terms and definitions
We here make some comments on the terms introduced above, and also attempt to provide
some more precise definitions, of these terms and some additional ones.
Let us first consider the terms plant and process, which are almost synonymous terms. In the control community as a whole, the term plant is somewhat more general than process: A process usually refers to the “process itself” (without any control system) whereas a plant may be any system to be controlled (including a partially controlled process). However, note that in the chemical engineering community the term plant has a somewhat different meaning, namely as the whole factory, which consists of many process units; the term plantwide control is derived from this meaning of the word plant.
Let us then discuss the two closely related terms layer and level which are used in hierarchical control. Following the literature e.g. Findeisen et al. (1980) the correct term in
our context is layer. In a layer the parts acts at different time scales and each layer has some
feedback or information from the process and follows setpoints given from layers above. A
lower layer may not know the criterion of optimality by which the setpoint has been set.
A multi-layer system cannot be strictly optimal because the actions of the higher layers are
discrete and thus unable to follow strictly the optimal continuous time pattern. (On the other
hand, in a multilevel system there is no time scale separation and the parts are coordinated
such that there are no performance loss. Multilevel decomposition may be used in the
optimization algorithm but otherwise is of no interest here.)
Control is the adjustment of available degrees of freedom (manipulated variables) to
assist in achieving acceptable operation of the plant. Control system design may be divided
into three main activities
1. Control structure design (structural decisions)
2. Controller design (parametric decisions)
3. Implementation
The term control structure design, which is commonly used in the control community, refers to the structural decisions in the design of the control system. It is defined by the five tasks (given in the introduction):
1. Selection of controlled outputs (