Large industrial complexes can have many fired heaters, making broad-based competency in this area essential to overall reliability, safety and energy efficiency. Despite industry’s widespread familiarity with fired heaters, they continue to pose significant control and operational challenges, especially in achieving reliable multivariable control of temperature, fuel gas flow, burner pressure, draft, excess oxygen, and other important heater preformance and safeguarding variables. This is a natural application for base-layer APC.