Process industry manufacturers prioritize IT/OT collaboration

Global software developer eschbach, a provider of digital manufacturing solutions for the pharmaceutical, chemical and food manufacturing sectors, announced new research findings for process industry manufacturers that show IT and OT collaboration using Plant Process Management (PPM) solution has become an investment priority. The survey was sponsored by eschbach and conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The top-ranked priorities cited by respondents for a PPM investment include: 

• Capturing and sharing best practices for worker safety, 
• Platform to record real-time incidents for reporting and corrective action,
• Broader collaboration and communication among production teams and managers, and
• Platform to provide interactive production loss accounting.

“In the drive toward the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) over the past few years, the greatest focus has been on instrumenting machinery,” noted Andreas Eschbach, CEO of eschbach. “Due to IIoT ignoring human factors, now comes a realization that collaboration between humans and machines must become a priority, particularly in shift management. Industrial enterprises need to equip the people tasked with using and managing machinery in the overall process so that they optimize plant operations and ensure worker safety.”

Because the process industry has been slow in its digital transformation, it is not surprising that 42% of respondents said they were somewhat to very interested in a packaged PPM solution. With worker safety and process optimization cited as key issues, as supported by 86% of respondents relaying that one or more safety incidents are caused by a communications breakdown, it makes sense why PPM would become such a high priority.