With the advent of AI, IIoT technologies, and digital twins, today’s industrial operators no longer scramble to silence alarms, they focus on how quickly they can interpret the intelligence behind them.
This is in contrast to the constant vigilance that came from manually controlling equipment. Industrial operators are now supervisors of highly autonomous systems, making strategic decisions, validating AI-driven recommendations, this all while improving operational performance.
“Instead of monitoring individual process variable, operators are now investigating anomalies, reviewing predictive maintenance alerts, analysing performance trends and so forth. They are no longer asking, how do I keep this machine running but rather, how do I optimise operations?” notes Kobus Vermeulen, Direct Sales Executive, Process Automation at Schneider Electric.
Bafana Msibi, Customer Sales Executive, Process Automation at Schneider Electric concurs: “Successful operators are not only measuring stable production but improvement in energy efficiency, asset utilisation, quality and sustainability.
“Consequently, the operator's role is becoming far more closely aligned with overall business performance.”
