By: Kobus Vermeulen - Direct Sales Executive, Process Automation at Schneider Electric

Process automation projects kick off the best intentions, and rightly so.  There’s nothing quite like a blueprint that has been hammered into brilliance, with the promise to deliver and then some.  But often projects get derailed by changing priorities, skills constraints and project complexity. 

And beneath these challenges lurks something more fundamental – many industrial projects have been designed based on assumption that no longer hold true when implementation starts.

Unfortunately, projects will often be planned with technology first and business outcomes last.  What should happen is setting firm deliverables and outcomes such as reducing unplanned downtime, improving energy efficiency, increasing production, mitigating obsolescence, improving safety and reducing maintenance costs.

These will also make clearer case for the implementation of the newest advancements in process automation like upgraded distributed control system (DCS), the newest SCADA platforms, AI capability and virtualised infrastructure.

Indeed, it will provide an organisation with a definitive measure of whether the investment is creating value as opposed to looking a spreadsheet filled with one technology line item after another.

Don’t prevent change – design for it

Another reason industrial projects struggle is that they become too large and rigid.  An  automation programme may start as a control-system modernisation and gradually expand to include alarm management, historian migration, cybersecurity remediation, manufacturing execution system (MES) integration, reporting, training and advanced analytics.

It’s a mouthful and whilst each requirement may be justified, collectively, they can create a programme so complex that delivery becomes increasingly difficult.

The first phase should therefore focus on stabilising critical assets and addressing the highest operational risks. The next could then target efficiency and optimisation and advanced analytics and AI can then be introduced where there is a more defined business case.

This will create points at which priorities can be reassessed without putting the entire investment at risk.

Architecture is fundamental 

Industrial organisations cannot anticipate every operational, regulatory, or commercial demand they will face over the next 10 to 20 years, however, automation assets often remain in service for decades

This makes a strong case for flexibility; here open, modular, interoperable and scalable architectures will allow organisations to modernise incrementally, integrate existing assets and introduce new capabilities without having to redesign the entire environment.

This is particularly relevant in Africa, where many process industries operate complex brownfield environments. Replacing everything at once is rarely practical or commercially attractive.

The ability, therefore, to modernise progressively, while continuing to operate the existing plant, can be just as important as the capabilities of the new technology itself.

Technology creates value when people use it

We all know automation changes how people work; operators may need to use new HMIs, engineers may have to adopt different workflows, and maintenance teams may need new skills and procedures. 

This is why operational ownership needs to begin at the start of the project, rather than when engineering hands the completed system to the plant.

Also, operators, maintenance teams, production managers and operational technology support teams should all have a voice throughout the process.

Agility is a competitive capability

Looking five to ten years ahead, the process industries that remain competitive will not necessarily be those with the newest technology. They will be those capable of adapting their operations as conditions change.

That means being able to introduce new technologies without major disruption, respond to changing demand, optimise continuously and make better decisions using real-time operational data.

Technology can be purchased relatively quickly but building the requisite skills, culture and organisational capability to extract value from said technology, takes considerably longer. 

Additionally, sustainability should always remain front and centre in any project - energy efficiency, resource optimisation and asset longevity are increasingly connected to both operational performance and commercial outcomes. 

The successful automation projects of the future will not be the ones with the most ambitious technology roadmap but rather the ones that has a clear business purpose, strong operational ownership and an architecture flexible enough to evolve.