(162a) The Role of APC in Industry 4.0

The process industry is undergoing a significant transformation that will change the way plants are controlled, operated and maintained. This transformation goes under the name of “Industry 4.0 revolution”.

This revolution will lead to an increased digitization and interconnection of products and services (the internet of things/services) will drive an increase of productivity and resource efficiency.

Industry 4.0 will lead to a greater integration of process design, operations and maintenance.

The role of engineers and operators will undergo a significant transformation. There will be an increased quantity of data and information that will be made available on a real-time basis, from process measurements, to economic information and maintenance data, covering the entire supply chain and plant lifecycle.

There is a need for tools that pre-process these information and data, helping engineers and operators to take fast and smart decisions.

Advanced Process Control (APC) is a technology that has been widely applied to numerous process units to optimize plant operations in real-time. The most successful version of APC in the continuous process industry is Multivariable Predictive Control (MPC), which allows the economic optimization of linear processes respecting multiple process constraints.

There are several commercial products on the market that have been widely applied in the continuous process industry and especially refining and petrochemical industries.

The implementation of these technologies has resulted in significant benefits, exceeding several Billions of USD of incremental benefits and savings to the process industry. In some cases APC has significantly contributed to the increase of margins, improving competitiveness of operating companies.

The basic principles of the technology have been almost unchanged in the past 20 years with minor modifications to the main algorithms. Over the past 10 years the technology has reached a mature level with most of the development concentrated on developing more modern interfaces or aligning the software with upgrades and advances of operating systems.

However there have not been significant improvements in the technology that is now viewed as a mature technology and has been in practice commoditized. The cost of implementation has gone down mainly due to competitive pressure and not by increasing execution effectiveness.

The role of APC in the coming digitalized and interconnected Industry 4.0 cannot be the same.

APC can play a fundamental role but needs to go significant changes of structure, technology and implementation methodologies if it wants to re-gain a dominant position during this transformation.

The paper focuses on what is required for APC to remain a key technology in the coming industrial revolution.

The paper will focus on various aspects, trying to answer some critical questions on the role of APC in the industry of the future:

- What are the main technology changes that are required?

- How can APC be integrated with other technologies?

- Will APC still remain a commodity?

- What is the position of APC in the new supply chain?

- How will operators and engineer interact with APC?

- What additional value can APC bring to the process?