This paper explores one of the important yet unanswered questions associated with the plantwide control of processes with recycle, namely, how inventory control system tuning affects plantwide regulatory performance. The first portion of this paper presents a simple analytic treatment of the problem using simple transfer function models. In the second portion of the paper, a more realistic reactor/column process is studied. Recommendations are given for tuning inventory controllers in a plantwide environment. We show that tight level control of chemical reactors is not desirable from the standpoint of plantwide regulatory control.