Professional ISA-106 Procedural Automation Essentials: Automating Continuous Process Operations Through Procedure-Based Control Strategies

Bring structure, consistency, and operational discipline to continuous process automation. This practical guide presents a clear framework for applying ISA-106 principles to the design, implementation, testing, and lifecycle management of procedure-based control systems.

Written for control engineers, automation specialists, process engineers, operations leaders, and technical managers, the book explains how to turn operating knowledge into dependable procedures that coordinate control logic, equipment modules, operator actions, permissives, interlocks, and safety responses.

What you will learn

• Define procedural automation, operating modes, process states, transitions, and ISA-106 terminology.
• Convert process narratives and operating objectives into structured automation requirements.
• Build state-based models that distinguish normal operation, abnormal conditions, emergency actions, holds, pauses, aborts, and recovery.
• Design modular procedures with reusable operations, unit procedures, actions, interfaces, data contracts, naming standards, and version controls.
• Coordinate regulatory control, equipment modules, setpoints, control-loop ownership, permissives, interlocks, and protective actions.
• Develop safe, repeatable startup, shutdown, depressurization, product-changeover, feed-transition, and utility-transition sequences.
• Handle exceptions through fault detection, response branches, recovery strategies, alarm coordination, and interaction with safety systems.
• Create operator displays that show procedure status, progress, next actions, blocking conditions, prompts, confirmations, and manual intervention options.
• Translate procedural models into DCS and control-system applications while integrating historians, asset systems, reports, configuration data, and recipe values.
• Establish traceability, test coverage, simulation practices, FAT, SAT, operator trials, change governance, performance monitoring, and workforce training.

Practical guidance through realistic examples

Each chapter connects design principles with an applied scenario, including a batch-to-continuous transition, process-heater startup, pump-train changeover, vessel startup, distillation-column startup, cooling-water recovery, compressor startup, unit-sequence implementation, multi-stage shutdown testing, and procedure revision after a control-valve replacement.

The final chapters bring these ideas together with reusable patterns for sequential and parallel actions, shared-utility coordination, restart after power or system recovery, and the integration of safety, quality, and production constraints. Rather than treating procedures as isolated sequences, the book shows how they fit into a controlled operational system that remains understandable, testable, maintainable, and adaptable.

A focused reference for building reliable procedure-based control strategies across the full lifecycle of continuous process operations.