A PROCESS CONTROLLER FOR CONTROLLING A PROCESS TO A TARGET STATE

A process controller having a setting section for giving a target value for a fixed period of time, a control section including a predicting section for predicting a process response for the fixed time period in accordance with a current value of a process control amount and a virtual value of an operation amount; a quantitating section for quantitating a difference between the target value and the result by the predicting section; a calculating section for calculating a basic signal of the operation amount in accordance with the quantitated result, and an optimizing section including a predicting section for predicting a process response for the fixed time period with a control amount and an initial operation amount of the process; another quantitating section for quantitating a difference between the prediction and the target value, a calculating section for calculating the operation amount in accordance with the second quantitated result; and a section for performing control in such a way that the quantitating result and a predetermined evaluation criterion are compared with each other to perform an evaluation. The calculated result of the operation amount is repeatedly applied to the predicting section until the evaluation criterion is satisfied, a correcting signal used for optimizing the operation amount is obtained from a value of the operation amount when the quantitated result satisfies the criterion, and the correcting signal is added to a basic signal of the control section, and the adding result is output to the process.