One of the most important parameters of shape control of tandem cold mill is the edge drop, it affects both yield of the strip and the quality of the products. There is a large time-delay on the edge drop closed-loop control, it’s necessary to solve this problem for improving the quality of the shape of tandem cold mill. It is difficult to obtain satisfactory results with the traditional control method. So, the main content of the article makes two key contributions. It analyses the main reason of the time-delay on the edge drop closed-loop control. The dynamic characteristics of the time-delay of the edge drop closed-loop control by using the predictive functional control (PFC) algorithm are studied. The simulation results show that the PFC algorithm has good control quality for both accurate control model and non-accurate control model, and the anti-interference ability is stable. Besides, the control accuracy of the edge drop is improved.