Achieving Autonomous Operations

An end-user focussed approach and maturity model by WIB/NAMUR

Abstract

Process industries will face several major challenges in the coming years such as the need for increased productivity in all regions, flexibility of production and business processes, adoption to demographic changes and expert availability, especially in emerging markets.

Remote and autonomous operation concepts for plants provide a way to face these challenges. To achieve the economic goals associated with remote and autonomous operation, technological, human, social, and legal aspects need to be considered. Compromises on safety aspects are neither acceptable nor necessary since the respective technologies also offer potential to enhance process stability and surveillance.

The level of autonomous operation of a plant can be described by the so called “Autonomous Operation Maturity Levels”. These levels range from 0 (all manual) to 5 (full autonomous operation). This contribution gives guidelines to:

1. assess the maturity level of existing plants and
2. identify necessary tools, hardware and programs to achieve the next level of autonomy.

This is summarized in three matrices for the following categories:

• Asset Management
• Process Management
• Production Management

These guidelines not only aim to support end-users to develop concepts to achieve higher AO-maturities, but they also support and inspire vendors to come up with solutions that enable the end-users to do so.