Process Control - View of Autonomous Future, 23TAPPICon

In this forward-looking paper, we contemplate autonomous paper mills, their potential benefits, and the challenges to achieving autonomy.

From a process control perspective, mills have been automating tasks for the paper machine operator for decades. For example, most mills have sophisticated control loops keeping weight, moisture, and other key profiles uniform across the machine. Many mills today may be considered well-automated, but they are far from autonomous. Humans are still needed to perform a countless number of activities including taking lab samples, reacting to larger process disturbances, and maintaining equipment.

In a fully autonomous mill, production is carried out without human intervention. The complicated data analysis and decision-making tasks that are today performed by experienced operators and engineers are instead executed automatically by systems that can learn and adapt without human supervision. Maintenance and other physical operations are assumed by robots. The benefits of this type of operation are in three areas: safety, reliability, and efficiency.

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