The energy industry is facing a widespread shortage of talent: in 2018, the average age of energy industry employees was over 50 and it was forecasted that there would be a shortage of 80,000 industry personnel required to meet the need by 2030 for new workers in the smart grid and electric utility industry. At the same time, there’s also a need to enhance efficiency while maintaining accuracy and quality.
In order to address these challenges, Honeywell introduced a suite of artificial intelligence-enabled solutions on Tuesday, in order to help enhance decision-making speed, operational efficiency, and workforce productivity.
Honeywell’s suite of AI solutions for industrials includes Honeywell Field Process Knowledge System (PKS), Experion Operations Assistant, and Honeywell Production Intelligence.
The PKS Field Device Manager (FDM) is an instrument asset management system that allows instrument engineers to perform commissioning and maintenance activities remotely. PKS and its field assistant, which has AI powered by Honeywell Forge, includes a web-based application for supervisors, and a mobile device for field workers. It also provides access to the Experion Operations Assistant, which integrates explainable AI into the industrial process as a way to help operators identify production issues.
The Experion Operations Assistant offer step-by-step guidance, so it runs alongside plant operators, allowing companies to optimize operations while giving less experienced operators the chance to get expertise more quickly.
Finally, Honeywell Production Intelligence is designed to contextualize Operational Technology and Information Technology data from onsite operations, delivering insights and analytics-driven recommendations to executives. It also provides near real-time monitoring, diagnosis, and predictive modules as a way to address and prevent future production issues.
“As the industrial workforce experiences a skills and experience gap globally, the worker is still an integral part of the automation journey,” Lucian Boldea, President and CEO of Honeywell Industrial Automation, said in a statement.
“Honeywell’s technologies are enabled by AI to help improve the performance of the industrial workforce – enabling workers to increase efficiency and rapidly accelerate their time to expertise.”
Chevron partnership
In addition to the new suite of tools, Honeywell also announced a partnership with Chevron to develop additional AI-enabled solutions focused on enhancing refining operations.
That will include an Alarm Guidance application that provides operators with guided and specific actions to respond to alarms and operational events. The idea is to reduce lost profit opportunities and process safety incidents.
Using AI technology, the system will mine historical data on past actions to identify patterns of alarms and the corresponding operator actions that successfully return the process to normal operation.
In addition, Chevron’s operators will also be able to infuse AI into Honeywell’s Experion distributed control system (DCS).
(Image source: honeywell.com)
