A computer-implemented method comprising: executing a reservoir simulator on an oilfield reservoir model to obtain a collection of flow control device settings defined in continuous space, wherein the flow control device settings may be any value between a fully opened value and a fully closed value of the flow control device; receiving a user-defined set of numbers of intermediate positions of a flow control device; performing , individually for each of the different numbers of intermediate positions in the user-defined set, a k-means cluster analysis on the collection of flow control device settings to obtain a set of flow control device configurable positions , wherein the number of intermediate positions is the cluster count for each analysis and wherein the k-means cluster analysis for each number generates the number of clusters from the collection of flow control device settings , each cluster comprising a centroid corresponding to a flow control device configurable position of the set of flow control device configurable positions ; comparing the plurality of sets of flow control device configurable positions to each other to obtain a selected set deemed as the optimal set of flow control device configurable positions by performing elbow analysis on each of the plurality sets of flow control device configurable positions; and presenting the selected set of flow control device configurable positions for manufacturing a flow control device having the selected set of flow control device configurable positions or for selecting an existing flow control device based on a difference between the flow control device configurable positions of the existing flow control device and the selected set of flow control device configurable positions. executing a reservoir simulator on an oilfield reservoir model to obtain a collection of flow control device settings defined in continuous space, wherein the flow control device settings may be any value between a fully opened value and a fully closed value of the flow control device; receiving a user-defined set of numbers of intermediate positions of a flow control device; performing , individually for each of the different numbers of intermediate positions in the user-defined set, a k-means cluster analysis on the collection of flow control device settings to obtain a set of flow control device configurable positions , wherein the number of intermediate positions is the cluster count for each analysis and wherein the k-means cluster analysis for each number generates the number of clusters from the collection of flow control device settings , each cluster comprising a centroid corresponding to a flow control device configurable position of the set of flow control device configurable positions ; comparing the plurality of sets of flow control device configurable positions to each other to obtain a selected set deemed as the optimal set of flow control device configurable positions by performing elbow analysis on each of the plurality sets of flow control device configurable positions; and presenting the selected set of flow control device configurable positions for manufacturing a flow control device having the selected set of flow control device configurable positions or for selecting an existing flow control device based on a difference between the flow control device configurable positions of the existing flow control device and the selected set of flow control device configurable positions. <EOS>