  Process Industry (PI e.g. Steel, Metals, Chemicals, Cement, Asphalt,
Ceramics) is one of the leading sectors of the world economy, characterized
however by intense environmental impact, and very high energy consumption. In
spite of a traditional low innovation pace in PI, in the recent years a strong
push at worldwide level towards the dual objective of improving the efficiency
of plants and the quality of products, significantly reducing the consumption
of electricity and CO2 emissions has taken momentum. Digital Technologies
(namely Smart Embedded Systems, IoT, Data, AI and Edge-to-Cloud Technologies)
are enabling drivers for a Twin Digital-Green Transition, as well as
foundations for human centric, safe, comfortable and inclusive work places.
Currently, digital sensors in plants produce a large amount of data which in
most cases constitutes just a potential and not a real value for Process
Industry, often locked-in in close proprietary systems and seldomly exploited.
Digital technologies, with process modelling-simulation via digital twins, can
build a bridge between the physical and the virtual worlds, bringing innovation
with great efficiency and drastic reduction of waste. In accordance with the
guidelines of Industrie 4.0, the H2020 funded CAPRI project aims to innovate
the process industry, with a modular and scalable Reference Architecture, based
on open source software, which can be implemented both in brownfield and
greenfield scenarios. The ability to distribute processing between the edge,
where the data is created, and the cloud, where the greatest computational
resources are available, facilitates the development of integrated digital
solutions with cognitive capabilities. The reference architecture is being
validated in the asphalt, steel & pharma pilot plants, allowing the development
of integrated planning solutions, with scheduling and control of the plants.
