Industrial controllers for web transport systems typically use decentralized PID controllers but these techniques do not achieve good decoupling between tension and speed. Multivariable centralized controllers have been shown to provide better results but are not suitable for large scale systems due to their high orders. This paper presents a multivariable decentralized control strategy applied to a large scale winding system. It is based on overlapping decomposition method applied to the specific case of a web transport systems. Simulation results using two degrees of freedom H_∞ controllers show that disturbance rejection and decoupling between web tension and web velocity are improved.