A process control system controls a large scale plant such as thermal power plant. This process control system includes a target setting unit for setting an operation target, a control unit for receiving a signal indicating the operation target and for outputting a controlled variable to operate the process, an evaluation unit for quantitatively evaluating operation characteristics corresponding to the operation target of the process operated on the basis of a signal indicating the controlled variable supplied from the control unit, a modification unit for extracting an optimum operation process qualitatively squaring or conforming with the evaluated value derived by the evaluation unit out of a modification rule predetermining operation unit in qualitative relation between the operation characteristics and the operation target of the process and for determining the modification rate of the control unit, a storage unit having a model of a neural network for storing a relation between the operation target and the modification rate derived by the modification unit as a connection state within a circuit, and a learning unit for making the model of the neural network learn the relation between the operation target and the modification rate.