Multicriteria analysis and continuous process control: An example of interaction

Object of this study is the analysis of the capacity of establishing in real time the best configuration of the whole set of machines operating in the control loop. It is analysed and discussed, using as an example a real application involving a compressed air station. The two most relevant contributions of this paper concerns: (1) the evolution towards decisional processes, of automatic-control-dedicated techniques; and (2) the extension of multicriteria analysis methods to real time processes requiring very brief response times.