Distillation is regarded as the most important thermal separation process in chemical industry. The adjustment of desired product qualities lays special emphasis on the control system, especially in view of minimum specific energy consumption. The standard separation process does not exist. For this reason there is no general solution for the automation of distillation columns at the moment. The great variety of distillation columns and operating conditions requires the design of new, and the review of existing control systems. The presented decision supporting system shall help process and control engineers in screening alternative control systems at an early stage of the design process. The system is part of a cooperation project of the companies Henkel KGaA, Dusseldorf, Schmidding Werke GmbH & Co, Koln, and the University of Siegen.