The automated control of a process. Process control is used extensively in oil refining, chemical processing, electrical generation and the food and beverage industries where the creation of a product is based on a continuous series of processes being applied to raw materials.
Such systems typically deal with analog signals from sensors and meters that are transmitted to specialized computers which cause the temperature, pressure and flow to be continually adjusted (see
DCS and
PAC). Process control makes extensive use of analog/digital and digital/analog conversion. See
process controller,
control loop and
industrial automation.