The Power of the FOPDT Model

If you’re a parent, then chances are you’ve encountered this dilemma: It’s the day after your son or daughter’s birthday and you’re now faced with the job of assembling gifts provided by friends and family. You can either ‘wing it’ with the hope of constructing each toy quickly or you can hunker down and follow the manufacturer’s step-by-step instructions. While ignoring the instructions and following your intuition seems like the faster option, most experienced parents know that those instructions represent a speedier solution which ultimately results in a happier child.

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What is Feed-Forward Control?

In a previous post cascade control was introduced as an effective means of limiting the lag between an upset and the associated PID control loop’s correction. As practitioners know: The longer the delay in responding, the larger the negative impact on a process. Like cascade, Feed-Forward enables the process to preemptively adjust for and counteract the effects of upstream disturbances.

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