While digital transformation is often thought of as the goal of most industrial plants and operations, in fact today, even the most automated operations have yet to achieve full autonomy where actions are taken automatically with little human oversight required. The good news is that the technological capabilities that got enterprises where they are today are the same ones to take them farther. In a recent article in Plant Services, Emerson’s Vibhoosh Gupta (VG) looks at how foundational industrial automation technologies pave the way for more integrated operations, which in turn will lead to increasingly adaptive functionality.
In the article, VG defines the levels of operation as manual, automated, optimized and adaptive. Few plants are fully manual any longer, but many have some manual processes still slowing them down and increasing the chance of human error. The automated step, wherein the system measures process parameters and automates control of the equipment and processes, is where most operations are currently stalled. The optimized phase, VG explains, is where the system uses advanced techniques to optimize performance, recognize anomalies and alert users.
VG then goes on the explain the move to the edge that operations can take to reach this essential step. Read more about this important understanding of automation.
What phase of digital transformation is your operation currently in?