The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage
technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of
control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline.
New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial
processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies. . .,
new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial
reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced
collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers
to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of
industrial control for widerand rapid dissemination. Benchmarking is a
technique first applied by Rank Xerox in the late 1970s for business
processes. As a subject in the commercial arena, benchmarking thrives
with, for example, a European Benchmarking Forum. It has taken rather
longer for benchmarking to make the transfer to the technical domain and
even now the subject is making a slow headway. Akey research step in
this direction was taken by Harris (1989) who used minimum variance
control as a benchmark for controller loop assessment. This contribution
opened up the area and a significant specialist literature has now
developed. Significant support for the methodologywas given by Honeywell
who have controller assessment routines in their process control
applications software; therefore, it is timely to welcome a (first)
monograph on controller performance assessment by Biao Huang and Sirish
Shah to the Advances in Industrial Control series.
