An expert control system is built in order to find out best operating points, in the sense of metallurgical results, mainly Cu global recovery and specified characteristics of the final concentrate. The expert system administrates the set points of the controllers of the operating variables of the plant (froth depths and air flow rates). The control strategy maximizes the rougher Cu recovery subject to the condition that the produced rougher concentrate can be adequately processed in the cleaner, regrinding, classification and scavenger circuits. To achieve this, the quality of the rougher concentrate (Cu grade over a given value and solid mass flow rate under a given value) is monitored jointly with the degree of saturation of manipulated variables in the rest of the circuits, the quality of the final concentrate and the recovery of the scavenger circuit. The result is to find out how to operate the whole plant to obtain both a final concentrate meeting specifications and the maximum Cu global recovery of the plant. Several examples are discussed. (C) 2017, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.