Scarcity of water resources along with population increase, industrialization, and agricultural expansion, in many regions of the world mandates the use of modern technology to supply the increasing demands for potable water. Multi-stage flash (MSF) desalination, a distillation process of removing dissolved minerals from seawater or brackish water, is well known for its large scale potable water production and it has been in existence since the early fiftieth. Among the different desalination methods used in industry, MSF plants account for over 70% of the total world installations. This necessitates the utilization of modern computer controlled automation in the design and operation of these expensive plants. Due to the complexity and large scale nature of these plants, improving their reliability of operation under continuous and heavy loads and their efficiency compared to other well known processes have not been studied thoroughly. However, there have been some simple preliminary efforts based on limited static simulation cases. Recently, some rigorous control and automation applications of MSF plants have been treated in the literature which showed some promising results in the cultivation of modern control techniques to the problem. In this paper, a comprehensive survey is conducted on the efforts made in applying automation and control techniques to MSF Desalination processes and plants. The survey includes well established classical control methods as well as modern more promising ones. Furthermore, some proposed new intelligent control approaches are outlined and their benefits are illustrated.