Bringing the digital revolution to solid waste processing, the vision of a plant autonomously adapting to material and market, operating at the economical optimum, is an obvious one. Though the path to get there includes much more than modern algorithms. A trinity of controllable actuators, suitable metrology and optimi-sation models is needed. Especially regarding the first two, the state of the art does not cover the requirements for fulfilling the vision – there is still a lot of work to be done in advance.