Optimization is an eternal topic in chemical processes due to limited resources and various safety and environment constraints. The highly intense market competition has led to the realistic significance of optimizing chemical processes. Chemical processes in China have achieved considerable development in recent years, and new challenges to improve operations have emerged along with this development. This paper briefly overviews recent progress made by our laboratory and existing challenges in chemical process optimization. The process optimization is introduced from the perspective of automation hierarchy and its coordination, followed by our major work with emphasis on real-time optimization and advanced control layers. Several cases of comprehensive optimization in typical chemical processes are highlighted in this paper. On the basis of these theoretical and industrial practices, challenges in process operations are discussed. Finally, opportunities for future research directions are proposed for high efficient operations and control of chemical processes.