Explaining Process Control Optimisation Recommendations via GradientSHAP and Implicit Differentiation
This study addresses the challenge of gaining operator trust in industrial process optimization recommendations, which often suffer from insufficient interpretability. The authors propose an efficient attribution method that integrates sensitivity analysis based on the implicit function theorem with GradientSHAP—a novel combination for explaining optimization outputs—and leverages a large language model to generate natural-language explanations tailored for plant operators. Evaluated on a high-pressure grinding roll (HPGR) control optimization task involving 22 input features, the proposed approach achieves a correlation exceeding 0.99 with KernelSHAP attributions while accelerating computation by over 40×, thereby enabling real-time interpretability. The method received positive assessments from domain experts for its clarity and practical utility.