Towards collaborative plant control using a distributed information and interaction space

As Smart Manufacturing, Industrial Internet, Industrie 4.0, and Cyber-Physical Production System (CPPS) are becoming reality, the way process and manufacturing plants are operated has to change. Additionally, these developments - constituting the pervasive digitalisation of industry - have a profound effect on the way human workers and machines interact. This paper contrasts the current state of the art in plant control with a vision for the future. The scenario is illustrated by a realistic problem-solving process in a chemical plant. It describes an integrated industrial information and interaction space that leverages emerging technologies to enable plant operators to remain in control of future flexible modularised process plants. Our approach shows the advantages of an integrated information space which feeds interaction and collaboration using Virtual Reality (VR), novel display technologies and mobile devices.