Mind the gap between process and IT

The need for closer co-operation between process control and IT departments has been flagged up clearly over recent years, However, it seems, little progress has been made in this area.

During a recent panel discussion on systems migration, for instance, Paul Stewart of Marathon Oil said that in industry each of these departments still typically end up running two separate and parallel ‘change’ processes.

“The IT guys don’t know much about the process control model and the process control guys don’t know much about the IT model,” stated the control and instrumentation expert. “This is very inefficient.”

The continuing stand-off is all the more surprising given the emergence of IT-related challenges such as those around cyber security, interoperability and enterprise-wide data systems.

What will it take to get industry to develop engineers who understand both process and IT and are empowered to apply such expertise within process organisations?