Smart Manufacturing: Handling Preventive Actuator Maintenance and Economics Using Model Predictive Control

Integrating components and systems of the manufacturing process is an important area of research to enable the future development and deployment of the Smart Manufacturing paradigm. An economic model predictive control (EMPC) scheme is proposed that effectively integrates scheduled preventive control actuator maintenance, process economics, and process control into a unified methodology. To accomplish this goal, a Lyapunov-based EMPC (LEMPC) scheme is formulated for handling changing number of online actuators (i.e., changing number of manipulated inputs). Closed-loop stability under the proposed LEMPC is proven. Subsequently, the LEMPC is applied to a chemical process network used for benzene alkylation to demonstrate that the LEMPC can maintain stability and improve dynamic economic performance of the process network in the presence of changing number of available control actuators resulting from scheduled preventive maintenance tasks. VC 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 60: 2179–2196, 2014