MOSCOW (MRC) -- Yokogawa Electric Corporation has revealed the results of its latest survey to gain further insights into the current and future state of industrial autonomy in process manufacturing, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The survey highlights that the number of manufacturers moving forward with industrial autonomy is clearly increasing, and that there is a high awareness of the expected benefits on environmental sustainability.
The global survey was conducted in seven markets (China, Germany, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, SE Asia and the US) amongst 534 respondents from 390 companies in the chemical & petrochemical, life sciences, oil & gas, power generation, and renewable energy industry sectors.
Key insights. Regarding environmental sustainability, 45% of the respondents anticipate that industrial autonomy will have a significant impact and another 36% expect a moderate impact in the areas of dynamic energy optimization, water management, and emissions reduction. In contrast, only 6% expect industrial autonomy to have no impact at all on environmental sustainability.
The implementation of industrial autonomy projects is starting to gather pace, with 51% of the respondents surveyed now scaling deployment across multiple facilities and business functions and another 19% reporting they have deployed in at least one facility or business function.
While productivity improvements in production and manufacturing processes are expected to deliver the highest return on investment (ROI) in digital transformation over the next three years – with 31% ranking this area first and a further 20% ranking it second – health, safety and environment is emerging as a key area of ROI, with 26% ranking it first (13%) or second (13%).
With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, increasing remote operations capabilities represents a key factor in industrial autonomy. The survey reveals that one-third (33%) of manufacturers have deployed remote operations in single sites and 31% have implemented across multi-sites in connection to industrial autonomy.
As MRC reported before, in January, 2022, Yokogawa was selected by ExxonMobil as the system integrator for the first field trial of an open process automation (OPA) system designed to operate an entire production facility. The field trial will take place at an ExxonMobil manufacturing facility located on the US Gulf Coast, replacing the existing distributed control system (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) with a single, integrated system that meets the open process automation standard (O-PAS). The project will incorporate enhanced control capabilities enabled through the implementation of OPA technologies and interfaces.
We remind that, earlier this month, ExxonMobil and SABIC successful started up Gulf Coast Growth Ventures world-scale manufacturing facility in San Patricio County, Texas. The new facility will produce materials used in packaging, agricultural film, construction materials, clothing, and automotive coolants. The operation includes a 1.8 MM metric tpy ethane steam cracker, two polyethylene (PE) units capable of producing up to 1.3 MM metric tpy, and a monoethylene glycol (MEG) unit with a capacity of 1.1 MM metric tpy.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC''s ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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