Hans Volkmar Schwarz

Industry 4.0 for Process Safety Hans Volkmar Schwarz

The Chemical industry has been using the same decision guidance tools to manage process safety for the last several decades. During this time there has been exponential growth in the amount of data collected at each site. In 1990 the cost of a gigabyte of storage was $100,000; today it is less than 10 cents. The tools available with Industry 4.0 enable us to leverage inexpensive sensors, data, and analytics to make far better decisions on how we allocate resources. This means far better process safety for significantly less money. This requires us to challenge the way we have managed process safety in the past, and develop a culture shift to support the Digital High Reliability Organization.