Optimized quality control and energy efficiency
In today’s demanding industrial environment, operators must navigate increasing process complexity, rising productivity expectations, and the need to make more accurate decisions around the clock. ABB Ability™ Advanced Process Control (APC) gives you the industrial software solutions to stabilize operations, reduce variability, and push your plant closer to optimum performance.
key benefits
<p>With decades of domain expertise, a strong network of industry experts and a global ecosystem of innovation partners, ABB is perfectly placed to provide cutting-edge leaner and more sustainable industrial software solutions.</p>
Optimize production while operating safely within process constraints
<p>Boost throughput and productivity confidently, with advanced control that keeps your plant running safely at optimized performance.</p>Achieve optimal, repeatable process performance
<p>Unlock consistent, high‑quality results with intelligent automation that stabilizes operations and minimizes variability.</p>Increase energy efficiency and improve product yields
<p>Drive more sustainable, cost‑efficient production by maximizing energy use and elevating output quality, all while lowering your environmental impact.</p>how it works
Advanced Process Control (APC) gives you the competitive edge you need by using sophisticated Model Predictive Control (MPC) technology to optimize complex process units, increase throughput, boost energy efficiency, and cut production costs, all while keeping your operation safely within critical constraint limits.
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Flexible control that adapts to your operational goals
APC's multi‑objective optimization engine and intuitive tuning interface make it easy to balance performance, energy use, quality, and stability. Empower your teams with digital transformation tools that simplify complex decision‑making and deliver consistent, reliable results. The comprehensive software suite includes data collection, model identification, auto step testing, and performance monitoring to support continuous improvement across operations.
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Seamless model switching for continuous, confident operation
Full model switching empowers operators to always have the insights they need to run safely and effectively. This approach helps teams stay familiar with plant behaviour during start‑ups, shutdowns, malfunctions, or emergency scenarios. Enable stronger operational awareness and safer, smoother transitions across the plant lifecycle.
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State‑space intelligence for faster, more accurate response
APC’s advanced state‑space formulation efficiently manages both slow and fast process dynamics in a single application. Its integrated estimator, powered by Kalman filtering, detects disturbances early and accurately, allowing the control system to respond proactively. Ensure better stability, fewer disruptions, and higher overall process reliability through precision‑engineered industrial automation software.
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Energy‑aware optimization through native OPTIMAX® integration
With built‑in integration to ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX®, APC becomes a powerful enabler of real‑time energy and process optimization. This gives you the flexibility to implement site‑wide energy strategies, participate dynamically in energy markets, and coordinate production with energy availability and pricing. Minimize cost, reduce emissions, and elevate plant‑wide performance.
Toward Autonomous Operations In Industry
Industrial operations are under growing pressure - rising process complexity, fewer experienced workers, stricter safety expectations, volatile markets and increasing demands to reduce energy use and emissions. These challenges create real risks: more operational disruptions, higher costs, greater exposure to safety incidents and difficulty maintaining consistent performance.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
<p>Still unsure about how ABB Ability™ Advanced Process Control can benefit your business? Have a look at our frequently asked questions.</p>
ABB Ability™ Advanced Process Control (APC) is an advanced industrial automation software solution that uses Model Predictive Control to stabilize processes, reduce variability, and increase productivity. By coordinating multiple process stages and automatically adjusting set points, APC helps plants achieve 3-8% increase in throughput, 5-10% yield improvements, and 10-20% increase in energy efficiency, delivering measurable improvements across complex, continuous operations. *
*According to ARC Advisory Group
APC acts as a core part of ABB’s digital transformation tools, building on decades of domain expertise to connect real‑time process data with advanced modeling. New digital technologies reduce the time and effort needed to deploy APC applications, enabling faster scaling across your production lines and making your digitalization strategy more achievable and cost‑effective.
Unlike single‑input, single‑output control strategies, APC simultaneously manages multiple interacting variables, predicting process behaviour and taking proactive action to maintain optimal operating conditions. This “autopilot” approach helps avoid performance fluctuations, reduce operator workload, and deliver more accurate, consistent system decisions across 24/7 operations.
Yes. By stabilizing process behaviour, improving efficiency, and reducing unnecessary fuel and electricity use, APC helps lower environmental impact while maintaining high throughput. Many customers see reduced energy consumption and more efficient use of raw materials, making APC a practical enabler of sustainability improvements across process industries.
ABB brings decades of process knowledge and industry‑specific expertise, continuing to work with customers to ensure APC applications reflect current and emerging operational challenges and deliver fast ROI. With hundreds of successful references, APC has been proven across the oil & gas, chemicals and refining, power and broader process industries.