Automation: The path to reliability

摘要

Consider the view looking back from 2020. Will the current decade be the decade of process automation? This may seem a puzzling way to frame the question. We have been automating for several decades. To understand the question, we must define the distinctions between modernization, automation and optimization. In investigating the net effects in how the process industry does business and operates facilities today, one conclusion is that the process-control business has been involved primarily in modernization, to some degree optimization, and least of all automation. That is surprising, since automation was the initial goal.