Industrial Automation Magazine India

The digitalisation of the process is the key to success in any environment

Published on : Tuesday 05-03-2024

Shirish Kulkarni, Founder & MD, STROTA ConsulTech Pvt Ltd.

How process industries have historically automated with sensors, actuators, instrumentation and control in their operation?

The process industries, due to the inherent complexity of the process, require built-in controls for basic working and process flows. These are built-in as a design with considerable numbers of the sensors, instrumentation and feedback control loops, and hence ensuring the overall visibility-monitoring-and-control on the process as an inherent feature of the process industry. Further efficiency and effectiveness of these basic building blocks are achieved with the latest of the trends in the technology space, which are segmented under the Industry 4.0 or Smart Manufacturing parlance. The objectives, and hence the challenges, for the process industry are completely different and unique against the discrete manufacturing – covering the elements of continuous flow, critical thresholds to prevent system going out-of-control, check-points at all the critical process steps, inter-dependency and hence inter-connectivity of the process parameters takes the technology to be implemented to the next level of complexity and hence usage. 

 

What are the examples of specific technologies or methods that process industries have used to enhance automation in their operations?

The elements of Industry 4.0 have been making an impact on the process industries as well. Their application and use-cases are specific to the context of the process industry. The elements of Industry 4.0 enable utilising real-time data and advanced analytics, to help process manufacturers to optimise and control their processes and to reduce costs, resulting in higher efficiency and increased profitability. The robots find their existence for quite a while – the areas where the human efficiencies are limited, access is controlled and the environment is not conducive – these robots with their inherent parameters of repeatability and consistency enable the process industry in a big way. The key perspectives of Industry 4.0 like  Process Automation, Simulation (Process/Product), Shopfloor to Topfloor connect, IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), Elements of Security – IT and Cybersecurity, the Digital Forces like Cloud, Mobility, Augmented Reality – Virtual Reality are helping the key scenario like predictive maintenance, Big Data Analytics, etc., bringing in the ability of forecasting of process parameters, the AI/ML scenarios bringing in the process to learn itself and self-decision making in the control window of operations. These technological aspects enable the process industries to be able to run their operations remotely, with more predictability and improved reliability.

 

What role does digitalisation now play in the transformation of process industries with the convergence of IT/OT (Information Technology/Operational Technology)?

The digitalisation of the process is the key to success in any environment as a basic first step towards any digital transformation. The connectivity of the process, capturing of the proof points across each of the process steps and availability of the digitalised data elements plays a major role for building the framework of IT/OT convergence. IT includes the computing, networking and storage technologies used to generate, collect, store, manipulate, analyse and deliver data within and between organisations. A core characteristic of IT is its ability to be programmed and reprogrammed to satisfy the needs of users, applications and networks. OT includes computing, networking and storage technologies used to monitor, process and relay information about and control physical processes in industrial workflows. These two dimensions come together at the interface of the actual process industry operations and the data, workflows, the business intents and hence the business data and hence decision points get exchanged and pass through the IT/OT interfaces. Following IT  business systems get converged [ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SFM (Sales Force Management)] to their counterparts in OT like PLCs (programmable logic controllers), SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) – Systems of software and hardware elements that allow industrial organisations to control industrial processes and collect and manage data, DCS (Distributed Control Systems) – Systems of sensors and controllers that are distributed throughout a plant – so that both the IT and OT worlds work in-synch for the desired efficiency improvements.

 

How do low code, edge computing, and cloud computing contribute to the flexibility and modularity of plants in the context of process industries?

Edge computing enables real-time monitoring and analysis of data generated by machines and other devices in a manufacturing environment, which can help to improve operational efficiency and reduce downtime. While the low code systems are the ones, which require minimal or NO code to be developed for their implementation or any changes in the business rules. Cloud computing enables the storage and processing of large amounts of data without investing in advanced in-house systems. It is essential for implementing Industry 4.0 technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity. The process industry generates a huge amount of data (Big Data) in the form of time-series data of various process parameters, set-points, on-the-fly calculations for compound values and forecasting. This data has to be handled for its contextualisation, storage, analysis and AI related learning of the process to be able to help the visibility, monitoring and hence control of the process more and more effectively – through these low-code systems, leveraging Edge & Cloud Computing.

 

Could you elaborate on the specific benefits that the integration of cutting-edge technologies, such as digital twins and artificial intelligence, bring to process industries?

Digital twins are used for simulation and operational phases of a product or process lifecycle. Regardless of how you build a digital twin, the overall outcome is having a digital representation that you can use to gain more knowledge and deeper visibility into your production process. AI provides an avenue for the digital system to define decision making rules through the logic which could be passed through the learning phase based on the decisions arrived at in every cycle. The AI-based digital twin of a process keeps learning and becoming more and more capable, intelligent and self-sufficient to address wider scenarios in the real life of the process plant. Digital twins help in simulation to be able to simulate trials of the process, which in reality is not possible at all due to physical limitation, and saving on the costs of each of the physical tests/trials eventually. AI helps automation of the decision making process to be able to have elements of self-controlled process and reduce the continuous manual interventions, by restricting the human acumen to be leveraged for the critical aspects of threshold setting, monitoring for outliers, getting the course corrections in place.

 

How does the trend towards more flexible and modular plants align with broader industry goals, and what are the potential implications for the future of process industries?

The scalability complemented by the reliability is possible through making the process robust against any of the undulations, disturbances – which is achieved by the self-learning, simulated process through AI and digital twin. The flexibility is offered by the capability of the process to accommodate any changes to any variants of the product or the process to be incorporated due the standardisation and modularity of the process components. This also helps reusability of these established, stable, documented, standardised and approved components of the process or the products themselves to be used for any other processes or for the future expansion to be incorporated. These components will be used as building blocks for the expansion of the process blocks and hence the newer elements of the process industry. 

  

(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented.)

 

Shirish Kulkarni is an industry veteran with large corporate experience of @ 30+ years. For the last 7 years, he has been helping the Small and Medium Businesses as a Business Advisor.

Shirish  has a unique mix of experience covering the current entrepreneurial advisory focus on streamlining and growth of Small and Medium businesses; and a vast experience in global organisations like KSB Pumps, TCS, BMC Software, Tata Motors, Geometric Sofware, Tata Consulting Engineers – for contributions in design consultancy, R&D centre of an Indian automaker, internal customer management and support as a part of internal IT group, exposure to the end-to-end product development lifecycle from renowned organisations from inception to stabilisation and finally inward/outward-looking experience in a services organisation.

Shirish has mastery in Conceptualising the Transformation Opportunity and Readiness for the organisation, Building the Roadmap and enabling the Realisation – he has analysed @ 150+ businesses and has recently helped a manufacturing setup to re-organise to become a global player with a topline increase of @ 300%

Shirish is spearheading the Industry 4.0 assessment and value outcome implementations; and pioneering the Industry 5.0 Awareness and Implementation for Indian industry. He is doing his research on EV drivetrains and is in the process to set up CoE (Centre of Excellence) as a part of the Industry-Academia relationships.

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