Much of the food industry is characterised by the traditional ‘art’ of food production and the employment of relatively few trained engineers (Skjoldebrand, 1991). At present, many of the production processes rely to a large extent on the skill and experience of the operator rather than the utilisation of a clear scientific understanding of the process. In reality the transition from ‘art’ to ‘science’ is still an objective more than a fact in many food small to medium enterprises. Clearly, any effective control system must reduce this intuitive element through the use of appropriate control feedback and sensory inputs. However, no system for the foreseeable future will be able to entirely replace the experienced operator. It certainly would be a foolish step to embark on such a course. Instead, the objective is to develop appropriate decision support mechanisms to assist both the skilled operator and supervisory personnel to effectively carry out their production/processing duties. The first step in this development aims to free the operator from many mundane tasks (simple control decisions, data logging and reporting, etc.) and facilitate concentration of time and effort on more important tasks. This is a key step in operator empowerment.