A process plant retrofitting framework in Industry 4.0 perspective
Fabio Di Carlo, Giovanni Mazzuto, Maurizio Bevilacqua, Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica, Marco Ortenzi, Luciano Di Donato, Alessandra Ferraro, Marco Pirozzi
Abstract
Retrofitting old plants is an excellent alternative to their replacement to prepare them for industry 4.0. Many papers are related to retrofitting, but few studies concerned the process industries. A framework to retrofit a process plant is presented and applied to a two-phase mixing plant providing a guide starting from the plant study and ending with the I4.0 paradigm implementation. The approach allowed to improve plant safety and maintainability conditions. The several issues arising during the retrofitting can be related to its multidisciplinarity aspects, the recursion in the definition of new variables to be monitored, and the information flow management.